This lady here is Cathie Crawford from Simshill in the South East of Glasgow. I met Cathie today when I went along to find out about Castlemilk Stress Centre which has just had its funding withdrawn by the council. Myself and local SNP councillor Dave Ritchie were invited along with SNP group leader Cllr James Dornan (to the right of the pic if you look closely!).
I'm going to be helping them with their campaign to keep it open so expect to be hearing more from me on this one.
In brief, they provide a brilliant service for people with stress related conditions - that can be depression or anxiety or it can be mental illness or addiction problems - throughout a huge chunk of the Southside of Glasgow. They provide the right kind of services that really tackle the problems and I'll talk some more about this in another post.
At the end of January they were told out of the blue that their £80,000 funding from the Community Health & Care Partnership would end at the end of March. No consultation, nothing. Fifteen people out of jobs but more importantly (even to the dedicated staff) all those volunteers who got their lives back on track thanks to the CSC and all the current service users, dumped!
Cathie Crawford is one of them. She was outside collecting signatures on a petition when I left. Cathie is a former Barras worker so she has no problem in approaching people and she and the other service users will be fighting to the end to keep this service.
Cathie isn't doing it for herself. She used the service when her husband died a number of years back and when she no longer needed the centre, she asked to train as a therapist. She now works voluntarily for them and so, more than most, she knows the value of this crucial community service.
Expect to read more about it over the coming weeks and if you want to help in anyway get in touch with me and I'll put you in touch with them. They've only got 5 weeks left and over the next few days I'll give you many reasons why it just doesn't make sense for them to close.
I have signed the online petition to save the stress centre because it provides such a valuable service to the people in the south side of Glasgow. Centre's like this have a positive impact on people's lives, providing help and support to people when they really need it.
ReplyDeleteHere is a link to the online petition: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/petition/326028406