THE great niece of a 101-year-old has criticised plans to move her out of a bungalow she has called home for 20 years.

Laurence Cawley

THE great niece of a 101-year-old has criticised plans to move her out of a bungalow she has called home for 20 years.

Grace Jolly, who celebrates her 102nd birthday in a week's time, has been in care for the past 80 years because of her learning difficulties.

For the past two decades, Miss Jolly has lived in a shared bungalow at Stourmead House in Kedington, near Haverhill.

But it has now emerged all residents at Stourmead House, owned by the Suffolk Mental Health Partnership Trust, will have to move out by 2010.

Miss Jolly's great niece, Mary Cullum, claimed at first health chiefs considered giving her a flat and periodic visits from carers - something Ms Cullum described as ludicrous.

“A lot of these people cannot feed themselves. When I heard this suggestion I thought it was a joke - it was as though they were simply talking about people on a piece of paper and not people with real needs.

“The residents know Stourmead as home and to take them away from there and scatter them about is wrong.”

It has now emerged that health chiefs are considering placing Miss Jolly in a residential care home with her existing team of carers.

A spokeswoman for the mental health trust said although she was unable to comment on Miss Jolly's individual case because of patient confidentiality, she confirmed the six residents currently at Stourmead were affected by a national scheme called Valuing People Now, which is designed to help those with learning difficulties lead more independent lives.

“We are thinking about what will be best for all the people we are looking after. Care of this type of multi-agency, we are a provider and it is a nationally-driven policy.”