Earlier this year ago a care home accommodating four young and
vulnerable mentally-ill residents was opened on Penny Lodge Lane, Loveclough,
in Rossendale, Lancashire. Mentally ill
people are more likely to be discriminated against, insulted, abused, spat on,
punched, kicked and robbed by the rest of the population than most other
people. Clearly, for this reason we
should be concerned that they are properly looked after and protected from such
dangers by caring and well-trained staff.
As it happens, the circumstances of the four residents were such that
they were provided with 24-hour care, so they should have been safe. But that didn’t stop the local populace from
having a go. After two months of a
torrent of abusive emails to the home (with references to ‘schizophrenics’ and ‘paedophiles’),
threatening messages left on staff cars, and staff being accosted
in the street, the owners of the home have had enough and are moving to a new
location (Rossendale Free Press,
6.6.14). The final kick in the groin
came from Nicola May, the Conservative candidate in the local council
elections, whose election leaflet stated, ‘I’m just not sure that placing this
facility in the middle of an estate full of family homes is the right thing to
do’. ‘We don’t know what kind of people
are going to be there’, she recently told the Free Press.
According to Mr Graeme Proctor, owner of Prospects Supported Living
which ran the home, ‘We specifically chose a property on Penny Lodge Lane...as
we felt it would have the right community spirit…’ 