No residents will have to leave a Merthyr Tydfil care home as a result of proposed changes, a councillor has confirmed.
Councillor Chris Davies confirmed no residents at the Ty Gurnos Newydd care home would have to leave as a direct result of the propose reconfiguration of services involving the Gurnos home and Llysfaen in Cefn Coed .
The council is considering changes to Ty Gurnos Newydd (TGN) and Llysfaen Residential Care due to falling demand for a certain type of beds.
The plan is to reduce the number of residential places in Ty Gurnos Newydd to 16 with the continued segregation of elderly mentally infirm (EMI) residents and elderly frail residents.
The plan is also to relocate Llysfaen learning disability residential services to the empty wing in Ty Gurnos Newydd and keep its three permanent and two respite beds.
The hope is that this will enable a number of staff who had expressed an interest in voluntary early retirement and voluntary redundancy to leave while keeping the right staff-to-resident ratio.
In October 2018 the council wrote to all staff to see whether there were any expressions of interest in taking voluntary early retirement or redundancy.
At first 25 of the 44 staff working at Ty Gurnos expressed an interest to leave although this number then reduced to 11.
Councillor Gareth Richards asked whether residents would have to move in order to dispel incorrect rumours had been going around.
Although Angela Edevane from the council’s adult social care department said they couldn’t rule out people moving because of a change in their needs social services cabinet member Cllr Davies confimed no-one would have to leave Ty Gurnos as because of this proposal.
Cllr Richards said the council had to be complimented for the planning involved with moving residents from Llysfaen to Ty Gurnos while Cllr Davies said it was a “really exciting opportunity” and although there will be some challenges he said that they would meet them and that the Ty Gurnos facility will far better meet people’s needs.
A report on the proposals went before full council in December 2018 which put forward a number of options and a further report came before councillors in February this year recommending the current option.
At the February meeting councillors agreed to carry out a consultation on this proposal with residents, families, staff and social workers and bring a further report back to scrutiny and full council.
The proposals will now go before full council in September.
