Young people and families from Aberdeen highlighted the growing crisis in residential care by calling on the Scottish Government and Cosla to deliver on their pledge that by next year, no-one with a learning disability in Scotland will be kept needlessly in hospital or forced to live away from their communities.
And Alex Busch, Executive Director of Camphill School Aberdeen (CSA) - where the young people and their families rely on life-transforming facilities – made an offer to Ministers:
“Help us by providing funding to help us build new residential places and we will help you deliver on that commitment.”
Speaking at an event hosted by Camphill School Aberdeen, Mr Busch told ministers and MSPs that, since 2020, the school has seen a 250 per cent increase in placement enquiries and has a waiting list of young people requiring care.
He said Camphill School Aberdeen recognised that it had to be part of the solution and so had launched a campaign to raise £10 million to build state-of-the-art and sustainable residential accommodation and provide life-transforming opportunities for an additional 54 young people with learning disabilities and very complex additional support needs.
Mr Busch said:
“The rate of enquiries and a sharp increase in referrals from local authorities for both residential and day services, together with an acute shortage of local and national residential services for young people, means a growing number of young people are either being sent miles away from their families or living in hospital units as they wait for other care options to become available.
“Our Building Futures, Transforming Lives, Together campaign is in direct response to this growing crisis in residential care, with a 33 per cent rise in the number of young people with complex and multiple additional support needs in the past 10 years.
“Without developing new provision, we will have to turn many young people and their families away as we are now at full capacity.
“That is why our campaign needs Government support - it is critical to our future and the futures of so many young people and their families.”
The new development will see capacity across the site increase by over 55% with the construction of three new residential houses, as well as extending workshop provision, creation of an awards centre and development of a social enterprise, Murtle Market. Phase 1 will focus on the first home for young people in crisis to help relieve local and national critical placement shortages.
Highlighting the economic impact on families with learning disabled children and young people, Mr Busch added that families are 2.5 times more likely than other families to have no parent working for more than 16 hours a week and only 16% of mothers with disabled children are in work.
He said:
"We were the first shared-living community in the UK for children with learning disabilities and we have continued to transform lives throughout that time. This campaign is our next step in improving life chances for the most vulnerable young people and providing a lifeline for their families who are at a disadvantage because of lack of facilities and support.”