Dear Editor,I’d just like to take a moment to remind you and hopefully your readers that the Labour council cut the funding this year to the Carers of West Dunbartonshire, to a point whereby they couldn’t even afford the rent on their offices. They have been forced into a much smaller office and as a result have now been forced to make people work from home. The Carers Center is the service many unpaid carers use to access support and the staff at the center are brilliant and will help anyone with absolutely anything they need. At the same time the Labour council also cut funding to the Ben View resource center, SEE PICTURE TOP OF PAGE, who provide hot meals and a bathing service for the elderly. The Ben View resource center is used by many different groups within the community as a safe and warm and very well positioned venue for various clubs and meetings. In addition to this they also cut funding to ysortit, who provide vital support for young carers.
Later on in the year they also cut funding to kinship care. This was arguably the most cruel cut because it meant that kinship care payments would stop completely for anyone over the age of 16 who had previously had a guardianship order in place. The previous rules meant that whilst the cared for person remained in education then kinship payments would continue until the age of 21, just like child maintenance payments. Our young adults who are in kinship care often need a little bit more time within education due to upsets and disruption earlier in their life and the funding is vital to ensuring the carer is able to provide a home and continued support during this period.
There was no impact assessment undertaken when all these cuts were made and the services and carers who were having their funding cut only had about two weeks notice. These services were struggling prior to the cuts and are now under more pressure than ever. Labour have not been kind to carers at all. This is true both at a National Level and a Local Council Level. All they seem to talk about are people who fit their definition of ‘working people’ and by their actions I can assume that they hold carers in very low regard indeed, despite what snippets they provide to the press.
The councilLor that was responsible for these cuts was Martin Rooney, Labour Council Group Leader. He voted to cut the funding at a meeting of the Health and Social Care Partnership in March this year. The cuts to kinship care seem to be a bit of a mystery because those cuts were not discussed at the IJB. Martin also warned that there would probably be more cuts to come next year. All this whilst demand for services is only increasing and costs of running centers is only increasing. A large part of the cost of course is power and heating, which will only increase as Labour bullishly and foolishly pursue their net zero ambitions to everyone else’s detriment.
Martin now wants to install his son, William Rooney as the councilor for Kilpatrick at this months by election. There is very little information online about William that I can see, however if you google ‘William Rooney Condescending’ then you’ll find a story in the Lennox about comments he made to Primary School Children’s parents online when the council wanted to relocate the their school.
To that end I am pleased to inform you that we now have local branches in Dumbarton, Clydebank, Bearsden and Strathkelvin. Reform UK are continuing to open branches throughout Scotland as the party gains more and members and supporters.
I am also standing at the Kilpatrick by election. I have provided a link below to our website which will provide you with a bit more information about me.
Thank you for all your hard work and for reporting the issues that really matter to people. I always look forward to reading the Democrat. Kind Regards, David Smith, Reform UK Kilpatrick By-Election – Reform Party Scotland
The Dumbarton Democrat wants to give local people their say in regard to local politics and other matters of importance in the community. While other news organisations are scaling down, The Democrat is doing the opposite and scaling up, despite the fact that we receive no encouragement or cooperation from West Dunbartonshire Council, who refuse to speak to us. We are independent of any political party and we are locally owned and edited. We are also FREE to access and we do not charge community groups for advertising so long as they supply their own artwork, words and pictures. We aspire to making a real difference and demolish the democratic deficit that the Council imposes on local people by refusing to answer legitimate questions when we ask them on behalf of our readers. We would love to have more people participating in what we do and we would appreciate more Letters to the Editor such as the one above. Now seems the ideal time to press ahead with this by inviting you to express your views in our Letters column. This area has never looked so deprived as it does right now. Let’s challenge the people in power to make a difference which is what they promised to do when they were elected.