WHAT happened to our social care?

Presently, our hospitals are struggling to provide beds for people urgently needing medical care due to our elderly folk occupying these beds because there is nowhere else for them to be looked after.

Looking back to the 1970s through to the turn of the century, our local authorities provided council run care homes along with day care centres for our elderly persons to receive the social care and necessary treatment which obviously took the strain off our NHS.

Then over a period 10 to 15 years, these care homes no longer existed for our elderly who cannot afford to pay a fortune for private care.

These homes were quietly handed out to trust organisations who then decommissioned them.

I would be able to name around 20 of these homes in the BCP area of the county, so I would guess as many as 50 homes for our elderly have disappeared in Dorset alone.

I appreciate that the cause of all these closures are as a result of central government cuts, but it is difficult to understand why any senior local authority leader could be proud of his or her actions.

Mike Watkins

Headswell Avenue, Bournemouth