Hostel closure all about saving cash

From the archive, first published Friday 20th Jan 2006.

SIR - Closing the mental health hostel at 2 Stanley Road is part of a relentless drive to save public money.

If you want to send someone mad a particularly successful method is solitary confinement - and I spent many years as a social worker trying to support people with mental health problems whom I felt were not always helped by being placed on their own.

Far too many of them took their own lives or spent years going quietly (or noisily) mad because they lacked the social skills to "get out more" and make a success of living in "the community". And that's the other problem - "the community" is an increasingly unwelcoming place these days. But never mind - our caring Labour government can't be expected to bother about us when it has expensive wars to fight on behalf of global capitalism. You can't vote Labour and expect anything else - can you?

JIM EVANS,

Worcester.

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