An innovative community care scheme launched in Appin last year, to employ local carers to care for local people, seemed the ideal solution to a long-standing problem of inadequate care for ill or elderly people living in remote Argyll and the islands.
Appin Community Trust secured £17,000 from the Integrated Care Fund to employ care coordinator Elizabeth Bruce for a year’s trial period through Highland Home Care. A team of Lismore and Appin carers were recruited and trained, and even won a Scottish Care Award this year.
But now Elizabeth has been told her post will not be renewed because not enough people have signed up to the service and there is not the cash to renew her post. But surely the whole point of a trial is to see what works and what doesn’t, learn from it and then use that experience and information to create a better and more sustainable service.