When, due to the cold snap, disabled pensioner Joan Armstrong (81) found herself housebound, she called on Salford social services for help. She wasn’t looking for much, just someone to do a little shopping for her while she was unable to do it herself.
The answer she got is that she would have to wait two weeks for an assessment before they could do anything for her!!!
The fact that she didn’t know her neighbours well enough to ask any of them for help (and none of her neighbours thought to check up on her) is one problem, what we can do to get the community spirit back into our national psyche god only knows.
What is really alarming though is that the jobsworth at the other end of the phone, despite working in a caring profession, lacked the basic humanity to make the effort to get something done!
I’m sure that the people who actually do the caring (not holed up in a centrally heated office) wouldn’t have minded checking up on this vulnerable pensioner and could have easily done a quick assessment to show that she really did need a spot of help in these unusual conditions.
This “person” needs to be sacked, but more than that needs to be named, shamed and vilified, abandoning Joan in this way was attempted manslaughter.
Many pensioners faced with this callousnes would just have given up and likely become another victim of the cold, luckily in this case the Manchester Evening News became involved.
