Meals On Wheels Use Slashed By Almost Half After H&F Conservatives Set Out To Deter Usage

The numbers of local elderly and disabled people using H&F Council’s meals on wheels service has dropped from 420 to 260. This is a direct result of the Conservative Administration’s rather dubious cost-cutting measures which involved:

• Increasing prices of the meals service by £558 per year since 2006.
• The highly questionable policy of telephoning elderly residents up and encouraging them to stop using the service - as happened to a 79 year old lady who suffers with dementia and lives on the Peabody Estate in Hammersmith. Indeed, she would have been put at risk if I hadn't forced the council to reinstate the service after being contacted by worried relatives.
• Forcing many people to switch to microwave food deliveries.

Back in 2007, I asked a senior finance official what rationale lay behind this new approach. She said that “the Administration wants to make more money from this service”. Well, it seems their tactics have paid off.

This time last year, Dawn Stephenson, director of Age Concern Hammersmith and Fulham, summed up the dangers of this policy when she said “You hear about elderly people who die in their homes, but no-one visits them for weeks. That daily contact is really, really critical and if the service is reduced or cut altogether that would be just tragic”.

An incoming Labour Administration will cut these charges and will dramatically improve on the current situation for our elderly and disabled residents.