ADULTS with learning disabilities in the Okehampton area could be missing out on important day services because of a lack of social services funding. The owner of a West Devon smallholding which caters for young disabled adults claims the private care project he operates is facing an uncertain future because Devon County Council do not have funds to allow potential users to access the service. Lindfield at Sampford Courtenay is a working smallholding established to provide day services for adults with learning, physical or mental disabilities. Kevin Cozens, who runs Lindfield said: ?A lot of people who want to access our services cannot do so because the money is not available. ?There are people who would love to come but they cannot find the funding. I have all the paperwork. ?All it needs is for care managers to fill out one form, but no-one is prepared to do that. Social services say the money is there, but they won?t release it.? Devon County Council deny it is a question of finance, and say they are modernising their services to give people more choices about how and where they are supported. Mr Cozens said Lindfield was currently running at around half-capacity with 10 service users, who at the moment had to pay for their day sessions themselves or were being supported by a care organisation. He said the current situation was not sustainable and unless some more users were enabled to take advantages of the service, he might have to shut down or reduce the operating hours of the farm for a period during the winter. Mr Cozens said the service aimed to provide users with a sense of self-worth through working and activities, including feeding animals such as pigs, llamas, chickens and rabbits, or through gardening and horticulture. The farm also has a dedicated craft centre where activities such as candle-making are on offer. Mr Cozens said: ?We have had a few clients who had behaviour problems, but people say there seems to have been such a difference since they have been coming here and have felt motivated to do something outside.? Mr Cozens said since Lindfield had opened in April 2005, Devon Social Services? rhetoric concentrated on giving more choice to users, but he had ?tried until he was blue in the face? to encourage them to enable this policy to be turned from words into action. Graham Axford, a director at Easterbrook Farm, which operates a similar ? although residential ? care project for the learning disabled near Exbourne, said he was not surprised to hear of the difficulties the Lindfield project was facing. He said: ?The problem we have at the moment is that local authorities generally are under serious financial constraints. A local authority social worker will typically have 70 or 80 clients and each of those clients has to be regularly assessed. ?The grossly inadequate funding from Government means a huge burden is placed on local authorities.? However, Mr Axford said he had seen first hand the benefits in terms of their confidence and life skills which service users got from schemes such as Easterbrook and Lindfield: ?Can you imagine the thrill someone gets from being able to turn round to their parent when they visit and say ?Would you like a cucumber? I grew that? or ?Would you like some tomatoes? I grew those,? or to be able to give them a Christmas present of a bird box they have made.? A spokesmen for Devon County Council said: ?The council currently provides most of its day services for people with learning disabilities itself, but also commissions some day services with private sector care providers. ?Within those arrangements we would like there to be more flexibility than there currently is to give people more choice about how and where they are supported. ?That is why we are in the process of modernising our services ? to give people more choice about how and where they are supported and enable independence as much as possible. The type of service provided at Lindfield may well be the sort of service that we may wish to commission in the future.?
