When Push Comes To Shove

Gerry O'Halloran with some election day thoughts on a battle by residents against politicians to keep the Fallswater Day Centre open. Gerry O'Halloran is part of a group of carers campaigning against closures of mental health and learning disability day centres in Belfast.

Our protests to save mental health and learning disability centres gets a mention in in today's Andersonstown News. It's a good wee article.

Remember please when you are voting to support candidates that supported our campaign. However, we did not vote Sinn Fein ourselves, as we see Sinn Fein as complicit in these cuts. We gave our votes to Gerry Carroll and Tim Attwood.

Although Fra was with us, the party itself handed welfare to the Tories. And when push comes to shove, Sinn Fein can hardly oppose cuts after that. Also there was controversy over a Sinn Fein councillor wanting to make Fallswater a shared community space which would force elderly learning disabled out quicker than closure.

Fallswater is a specifically adapted building for learning disabled,. It needs to be kept that way and funded properly. I hope that situation does not arise again.

There are other parents out there that have young kids still at school who have disabilities, and may feel this campaign has nothing to do with them. But where will your child go if the centres close, when he or she reaches a certain age? This affects us all.

Keep our services open and within the NHS.




1 comment:

  1. Fair play to the people who took part in this protest against the possible closure of the care centre and also to my brother Patrick who is in the forefront of this picture and my sister Theresa. Victory to the care workers.

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