NOTHING will close - but every user of social services in Oxfordshire will feel the squeeze after another £2m of cuts to the service were agreed.

The county's social services department, with a total budget of about £88m, will suffer cuts worth £5.7m in 1998/99. The cuts have been made by 'salami slicing' - £200,000 off the family centres budget; £200,000 from disability respite centres; £237,000 off meals on wheels; £52,000 from mental health nursing; and so on.

County councillors say the 'no closures' policy will allow services to be restored half-a-dozen years down the line, when Oxfordshire hopes to have more money. But that was little comfort to the people who packed an emotional meeting of the social services committee yesterday.

Mrs Sue Knaggs, of Goring, was there because the psychiatric social worker she and her family consulted in Henley is one of the 75 or so people in the 3,000-strong department who could lose their job.

Mrs Knaggs, whose children are aged six and 14, said the family came under huge strain because her husband was working seven days a week.

"She was wonderful. We only saw her two or three times but my husband did stop working every weekend. It made my family's life easier," she said. "It is not just the odd person who needs this; everybody at some stage might need it."

At the end of last year nearly all of Oxfordshire's 11 family centres were threatened with closure. That is not on the cards for this year but many will have their funding cut by a third and lose up to three members of staff.

Services to the elderly have been hard hit, taking a total cut of £1.62m. The money will be saved by increasing the cost of meals on wheels from £1.45 to £2.10, increasing charges for day and residential care and laundry, and 36 job losses.

It is hoped there will be no need for more compulsory redundancies. A senior manager in the administration and training department was made redundant in late 1997.

Ms Eva Blacklock of Age Concern, Oxfordshire, said a particular worry was that home care visits could be cut to half-an-hour or even 15 minutes as fewer care assistants tried to keep the service going.

"Older people are often isolated enough. How can a half-hour visit, in which they are got up, washed, dressed and given breakfast, be enough? Older people need to take things a bit more slowly," she added. Another £155,000 will be saved by introducing day care charges, similar to the ones already paid by elderly people, the physically disabled the mentally ill, for people with learning disabilities.

The county council's social services department is responsible for about a quarter of council spending and is expected to shoulder half the Government-imposed cuts. Oxfordshire Carers' Forum, which represents many people who will suffer because of the cuts, has threatened to sue the county council for providing inadequate care.

Mrs Mary Robertson, Oxfordshire's director of social services, said the services the council legally had to provide had been protected as far as possible.

She said: "Services will be very, very seriously stretched and I am very concerned about groups like vulnerable elderly people or families whose needs are very great, who don't fall within the statutory framework and whose situation is going to deteriorate.

"We may be challenged. It depends on whether an individual has the resources to challenge us, but we are fairly confident."

Mrs Robertson added that spending nationally on social services was low because, unlike education or health, it was not in the public eye.

"The general population don't encounter our services. It is only when people are in extreme need that they become aware of how devastated our services have been," she said.

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