Madam,

Re your letter from Mavis Birch in the Cambrian News of 29 June - ‘It’s shameful and heartless to plan closure of Bodlondeb care home’.

Firstly, may I sympathise with Mrs Birch as the carer of her husband who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. As a family, sadly we have also experienced this illness. My aunt also suffers from it and no longer knows her own daughter.

Like Mrs Birch, I feel very strongly that we need provision for nursing dementia in north Ceredigion and to this end the county council went out to tender for a provider to take over Bodlondeb in order to upgrade it to Care and Social Services Inspectorate Wales (CSSIW) standards and then to run it as a registered nursing home to able to provide nursing dementia beds. We are all frustrated by the fact that we failed to attract a provider able to take on the building and bring this much-needed provision forward.

Unfortunately, local authorities are not able, under present legislation, to run either ordinary nursing homes or those specialising in dementia nursing. If that had been the case then we would have been able to move forward to fill this glaring gap ourselves.

Around 10 years ago the county council commissioned Methodist Homes to provide a 90-bedded home, Hafan y Waun, in order to provide ordinary nursing and dementia nursing beds together with residential beds. The council had a block booking for a percentage of those beds. Unfortunately, the nursing dementia beds have not been provided, but, as you rightly point out, they do provide specialist residential dementia beds, to which we refer residents who need such provision.

Bodlondeb and the five other residential homes run by the county council are not nursing homes. Over recent years, the number of older people who wish to take up residence in our homes has diminished significantly. Subsequently, although we have transferred one home in Llandysul to be run by the health board as a mental health centre, we still have around 46 empty beds in the county. It is, financially, unsustainable to keep them all open as we desperately need the money to provide care packages for the majority of our clients who prefer to receive care at home.

We are also moving to modernise the provision in the county by working with the registered social housing providers to develop extra care flats where people retain their independence in flats, which gives them the privacy they need and want, behind their own front door, but ensures that they are also within easy reach of care if and when it is needed.

I very much hope that a modern provision, such as Maes Mwldan in Cardigan, will be available in both Tregaron and Aberystwyth before too long.

I fully understand that this is no consolation to Mrs Birch under present circumstances, but I can assure her that we will be exploring all avenues in order to continue the search for a provider willing and able to provide dementia nursing care in north Ceredigion.

I hope this clarifies the council’s dilemma.

Yours etc,

Ellen ap Gwynn, Leader of Ceredigion County Council.

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