REFER to Paula Waites' comments on September 13 with regard to care in the community.

I have nothing but praise for our Community Care Teams, which include district nurses, GPs and the Rapid Response teams. My wife and I care for 25 senior citizens, and on a daily basis experience the dedicated care of the community staff. On many occasions, with their assistance, we are able to prevent hospital admissions, allowing our residents to be cared for in familiar surroundings by staff they and their families know.

The point of Saturday's article was to highlight the apparent contradiction between what the hospital say they need and the proposal to establish a 20-bed intermediate nursing care facility in the community. As part of the financial recovery plan for the hospital, they made great play of the fact that they could close 26 elderly care beds because of revised procedures, and by discharging patients half a day earlier they would be able to negate the need for these beds.

Caring for senior citizens, I am aware of the trauma hospital admissions cause, and how detrimental every additional move while in hospital is. I believe that, when at all possible, we should prevent hospital admissions, and when admitted to hospital a premature discharge into a community nursing facility is an unnecessary transfer.

If a senior citizen requires short-term nursing intervention and has been admitted to hospital, they should continue to receive that treatment until they are able to be discharged home with community support, not to an intermediate facility.

If the hospital genuinely believes they do not need the 26 beds they are currently closing, then all well and good. My point is that by closing the ward it seems to have resulted in the need to establish a community nursing facility.

I believe this will result in service users being moved prematurely. This is just moving the funding problems of the hospital around the health economy.

The hospital needs more money to allow our senior citizens to be cared for in hospital without the need for additional moves. The hospital needs to lobby the government for more funding.

Andy Morgan

Councillor Hulton Ward