The council’s independent Scrutiny Board, which strongly criticised the council’s decision making process, is to hold a special meeting on Friday 4th at which it will decide whether to send the decision to close the Centre back to the council to be reconsidered.
One of the Crisis Centre’s founders, Jeremy Pritlove, has kindly agreed to represent the campaign at the Board meeting, where we have been invited to put our case in no more than five minutes. We probably have a little more than five minutes worth of concerns about the closure of the Crisis Centre. Should Jeremy talk about the lack of consultation, the disregard for the closure’s effect on minority groups, the lack of a plan to fill the yawning gap in provision, the way the council has tried to bring one of its own services into disrepute in order to justify closing it?
We read Cllr Wakedfield’s speech about budget cuts with interest. He said “we won’t cut frontline services to vulnerable people” and “we will maintain our commitment to value our staff”. We’d be interested to hear how valued the Crisis Centre’s staff feel now. Apparently the 500 people a year deemed too high a risk for any other service are just a figment of their imagination.
If the Crisis Centre is saved from closing….as it should so rightly be…..Will this also mean that the day centres who also do a vital job in saving lives, will also be saved, or is this just about The Crisis Centre?
They are seperate issues. But we are very supportive of the Save Our Centres Campaign, see links on the right hand side of the blog.