More than 125,000 people are backing a campaign to stop Second World War veteran Robert Clark, being forced into a care home after his local authority refused to continue paying for his home carer.
Mr Clark who is 96 and one of Britain’s oldest surviving prisoners of war, is being forced out of his home of more than 50 years because the council claim his care is too expensive, say his family.
The Telegraph report: Brent council claim the cost of a carer coming to his home in Burnt Oak, north London, is too great and they are trying to move him to a nearby facility.
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For the past two years, Mr Clark, who is also blind, wheelchair bound, and deaf in one ear, spent his £50,000 life savings on part of the cost of his £960-a-week live-in carer. But the council, which currently pays just £350 towards his care, is refusing to increase its contribution.
During the Second World War, Mr Clark was one of the few prisoners of war who survived Hitler’s 1,000-mile “Death March” retreat across Europe in 1945.
His son, Mike, 58, fears that his father will just “give up on life” if he is forced into a care home against his will, because it will remind him of prison.
Mr Clark was a gunner in the Durham Light Infantry when he was captured by the Nazis in the Libyan city of Tobruk in June 1942.
He spent the remaining three years of the war in a variety of prison camps in Poland, as well as taking part in the horrific Death March from January to April, 1945. Phil Porter, Brent council’s strategic director of adult social care, said: “We recognise Mr Clark’s contribution to this country and sincerely empathise with the situation that he and other older people like him across the UK are in.
“However, the problem arises as the care package that Mr Clark is choosing is not affordable to council taxpayers given the constraints of local government funding and the need to be consistent for the 2,900 people we support.”
The council said the maximum they can spend per resident is £451 a week, but even if he moves into a care home, Mr Clark will require specialist help that costs far more.
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