YET again, we read in the Bury Times (Nov 26) that Bury Social Services has been condemned by one or other supervisory body.

In recent years, this incompetent shambles has been repeatedly criticised in the strongest possible terms by the Audit Commission, the Social Services inspectorate, the Local Government Ombudsman and now by the health minister.

After each official condemnation, we hear the same bleatings from the council about out-of-date figures or immediate action having been taken to improve things, but the incompetence continues year in, year out. Facilities for the most vulnerable members of the community continue to be closed - in my view - as a direct consequence of Social Services financial and managerial ineptitude. I write as one with bitter experience of Bury Social Services. Their treatment of my autistic brother over a period of eight years finally forced my mother - at the age of 78 - to move away from Bury entirely in order to have any hope of offering him the chance of an appropriate and professional standard of care.

In my family's experience, the single most disturbing aspect of this department is its domination by ideological considerations rather than any genuine willingness to consider the real needs of those it is supposed to serve. It insists on the blanket application of temporarily fashionable and politically correct theories of care practice, regardless of individual need.

In my brother's case, this extremist ideology led to those responsible for his care refusing to recognise his clinically-diagnosed autism - they insisted for eight years that he suffered from "learning difficulties". It is this level of idiocy which finally drove our family out of Bury, as it is quite impossible to rationalise with those who patronisingly dictate to us lesser mortals that only they know what is best for us, and whose first language is jargon.

These people failed my brother, and they continue to fail those vulnerable people in Bury who are least able to defend themselves.

Bury Social Services has been an ideologically obsessed and terminally incompetent basket case for far too long, and would deserve to have its responsibilities taken over by another body, if that were to happen. Surely they couldn't do any worse.

MICHAEL DUNN

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.