Informer celebrates victory in Hounslow home care campaign

The Hounslow Informer has won its three-month campaign to stop home care for the frail, elderly and disabled being handed over to the private sector.

Hounslow Council’s executive last week voted to retain the team that currently runs the service in the borough. The paper launched its campaign in March following conversations with carers who voiced their concerns about the proposals.

Since then, the paper has regularly run stories about carers and their patients and how their lives might be affected by the change. It also organised a march from the Informer offices down to the council headquarters in April. More than 120 supporters took part, heckling councillors as they arrived for a meeting.

News editor Tom Carlin said: “We talked to the elderly and disabled who said that their carers had almost become members of the family, but who felt that if private firms took over it would be different people who didn’t have that link. Carers thought the quality of care would drop. It is messing with people’s lives so we thought we’d campaign against it.

“We gave these people a voice and that’s what a paper like ours should be doing.”

The borough’s care manager Angela Head told the Informer: “The paper was there from the off, keeping us in the limelight. The support has really kept us going during the past few, very stressful, months.”