Widow's anger over plans to move husband

Roy Brookbanks was living at the PJ Care centre in Bretton when wife Carol received the letter from the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) saying he would be moved in November.

Roy (77), a well known city architect, who had dementia and had been at the home for three years, sadly died after contracting pneumonia following a fall a few days later.

Now Carol (73), who has been told other families have also been affected by the decision, is calling for residents to be able to stay at the home.

She said: “The letter we received was heartless.

“ The care they have given Roy has been exceptional.

“PJ Care got a letter three days before me. I was horrified. He was settled there. The staff were like his family.”

In the letter received by Carol, she was told she would be given the choice of two care homes to move Roy to.

She said: “It is not just the letter, but the tone - it would have been better to tell us about this face to face.

“I would have laid down in front of the doors to stop him being moved.”

A spokesman for PJ Care said: “Sometimes an individual’s needs are very specialised and they need to stay in a specialist centre such as PJ Care’s Eagle Wood Neurological Care Centre.

“Meeting these specialist needs can at first glance, appear to cost more.

“It is however, seldom understood that staying in a specialist centre reduces the overall cost to the taxpayer, because all of an individual’s needs can be met under one roof.

“Sadly, some individual budget holders in both local and national public bodies can become focused on short term savings to their individual budget without understanding the greater associated cost to other government budgets.

“This results in decisions being made to place people with specialist needs in less capable homes resulting in far greater long-term costs and a reduction in the quality of care and their quality of life.”

The spokesman added: “In essence, we have seen and been subject to decisions being made relating to a residents’ care, where a move takes place, solely on price, only to have the resident move back in a few months as they cannot be cared for properly in other environments.”

A Cambridgeshire and Peterborough CCG spokesperson said: “The CCG does not comment on individual cases, though all patients are periodically reviewed and discussions take place with families about the most appropriate placement for them.”