Dr Stoate presents petition to Parliament opposing closure of Queen Elizabeth Resource Centre 

Last week, just before Parliament broke up for the summer, I presented a petition to the House of Commons from the users of the Queen Elizabeth Foundation Resource Centre in Dartford protesting about the proposed closure of the centre.

The County Council, which funds the centre, has argued that traditional stand-alone day centres such as these are no longer the best way of providing services for physically disabled people. It plans to close the centre in the Autumn and replace it with a range of social and leisure opportunities based within the community. Activities such as ten pin bowling, bingo, swimming and shopping trips are being offered instead along with new social venues in existing leisure and community centres in Dartford, Gravesend and Swanley. The council maintains that providing services for disabled people in mainstream community settings helps to promote independence and combat social exclusion. It also argues that many disabled people today aren’t interested in going to traditional day centres and would much prefer to use more mainstream community facilities.

Most resource centre users have no problem with this shift towards a more integrated model of service provision. They are less happy though with the pace at which the changes are taking place. They argue that the alternative services being put in place by the council aren’t yet of a comparable standard to the services now being provided at the resource centre. Users have also told me of their concern about the accessibility of the new services to disabled people and about the availability of suitable transport to and from them. Their biggest complaint though is about the manner in which the proposed changes have been managed by the council. They feel that change has been ‘imposed’ on them without adequate consultation or negotiation.

These concerns cannot be ignored. It isn’t too late to delay the proposed closure of the centre until other services in the area are better equipped to cater for the needs of disabled people. Alternatively, the council still has the option of keeping the centre open on a long-term basis and possibly opening it up to other community uses. This approach has been successfully implemented in a number of areas around the country. Whatever happens though in the next six months, service users need to be forefront of the decision making process, not left on the sidelines.