Highgate Mental Health Day Centre faces surprise £190k cut

We have learned from service users at the Highgate Day Centre, and from the CNJ, that a two-thirds cut to the Centre’s budget is being proposed. This was announced by officers at a recent service users’ meeting. This was not flagged up in the budget process for 2007/8.

The surprise announcement that the Highgate Day Centre in Kentish Town will lose nearly two thirds of its funding (£190,000), has shocked patients and staff at the centre, who say it may have to close without the cash.

Care trust assistant director George Platts said the local authority had imposed 7.5 per cent cuts to the trust, amounting to £650,000. Tory Cllr Martin Davies has stated that this is a proposal by officers to balance the budget. Once again, vulnerable service users are being targeted for cuts to make the Council’s budget add up.

The previous Labour administration carried out a careful study of Mental Health Services, under the Best Value Review. The proposal for Highgate Day Centre, under this Review, was to transform it into a service for people with personality disorders. Now all of a sudden, we hear that another such service has been opened elsewhere by the NHS, and the Highgate Centre may be subject to this draconian two-thirds cut.

What is going on? Isn’t this closure, disguised as a cut? We assume the Lib.Dem/Tory administration would like to flog off the building as soon as possible, regardless of principle, as they did with the Jamestown Centre on taking office. We all remember the passionate defence of vulnerable service users at Jamestown by Lib Dem.councillors in opposition, only to sell it off on taking office. It is well known that people who use mental health services get exceptionally distressed by proposals to cut their services. A vague conversation with a service manager is a wholly inappropriate way to announce such a proposal.

Lib Dem councillor David Abrahams, health scrutiny committee chairman said to the CNJ: “I find the two-thirds cut very difficult to support. I accept no service can stay the same forever and that everybody in the health service is being asked to find efficiency savings. I don’t think it makes sense to suggest that the budget might be cut by two thirds without having an enormously damaging impact on the centre. Both myself and members of the health scrutiny panel will be looking very closely at this.”

The fact is that this cut only came about because of Camden Council. It makes their support in opposition for the Jamestown Centre (and subsequent U-turn when in power) totally bogus and a disgrace. Cllr. Abrahams scrutiny panel has done nothing about this and service users will be left out in the cold while our intentionally toothless scrutiny system points finders at others, when it should be blaming Camden’s ruling Executive. The Tories and Lib Dems should hand their heads in shame.