A HOME for children with learning disabilities faces the axe. Parkside is threatened with closure as part of a radical shake-up of social services.

Bosses say they want to provide users, especially children, with a better service based on their long-term needs.

Many residents of Parkside in Whitefield have grown up at the home and stayed there, denying other children admission.

The Stanley Road home was opened in 1975 but now, 13 of its 16 residents are adults.

Closing Parkside is part of a new strategy for people with learning disabilities, which selling off the building would help pay for.

Ms Sue Lightup, assistant borough social services officer, said providing Parkside residents with more appropriate accommodation was one plank in the plan.

Another was putting the emphasis on "Whole Life Planning", identifying problems early and arranging a range of care services with health and education agencies to cater for an individual's needs over their lifetime. "If we can give families with disabled children support much earlier, they have got more chance of being supported at home rather the traditional way of separating them from their families to go into a home," she said.

This could concentrate on respite care, where care workers would go to children's own homes to help, and the department's home from home scheme where foster parents look after children for short periods.

"We need to identify the best place for the Parkside residents. That might be a shared house in the community or in a different kind of hostel environment."

If approved, Parkside will join a list of buildings closed down by department bosses in recent months.

Croich Hey old folks home in Bury was closed last year, Fir Street children's home in Ramsbottom is to be shut, and talks are still raging over the future of Whittle Pike day care centre in Ramsbottom.

Such moves are part of helping people to live in the community rather than in institutions.

Reports on the shake-up, including any closure of Parkside, will be presented to a future social services committee.

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