By way for further background to the Full Council meeting this evening – Ed.
Following the ‘Please don’t close Westminster House‘ meeting on Monday, we’ve boiled down a summary what appeared to be the arguments against closing Westminster House (WH) and shifting the people to The Gouldings in Freshwater.
(If we’ve missed any off, please feel to add them below)
These are in no particular order ….
- Newport is a socialising and shopping centre for the Island and provides all of the opportunities that the current clients of WH want to socialise and mix with society at large. Lovely as it is, Freshwater offers nowhere near the same level of entertainment or social interaction with the rest of society.
- It’s current geographically-central location makes it the logical place for ease of travel and distance of travel. Freshwater, being on the West-side of the Island, doesn’t make a lot of sense. For example, the distance from Ryde to Freshwater is considerably greater than to Newport.
- Staff, some of whom have been caring for the same people at Westminster House for over twenty years, have been told by IWC that they will not have their car mileage paid to get to The Gouldings, but will be offered the bus fare.
- The Gouldings is currently a dedicated retirement care home, where the residents are obviously elderly. It is questioned if the mixing of young adults with learning difficulties – who can be quite noisy – with the elderly is fair or reasonable on either sets of people.
- The ground floor at The Gouldings, where the IWC plan to relocate the Westminster House accommodation to, is presently used for intermediate care for the current elderly residents. If this is taken away, the elderly residents will bee to stay in hospital longer and bed-blocking will occur at the hospital.
- The public transportation to and from the West Wight isn’t as good as it could be. Both those transferring to work at The Gouldings and those staying there would find it difficult to travel between there, Newport or their homes.
- What would happen if The Gouldings doesn’t work out? If Westminster House is sold off (a strongly held view by many opposing), they won’t be able to go back there. What’s the fall-back plan?
- It’s understood that the current residents at The Gouldings haven’t been told of the possible changes.
Image: © Google Street View
