A DAY centre for the elderly, a club for Alzheimer’s sufferers and two children’s centres are fighting for survival because of proposed budget cuts.

Wantage Health & Wellbeing Centre has already written a letter to Oxfordshire County Council objecting to the authority’s plan to shut it down.

And the October Club for people with dementia, which celebrated its 25th anniversary this year, is asking the council not to cut its annual £28,000 grant.

The children’s centres in Wantage and Grove are already looking at how to run without funding.

The county council has proposed cutting the services to save millions in the face of the Government slashing the amount it gives to local authorities as part of its austerity measures.

Elizabeth Tully, 89, goes to the health and wellbeing centre every Tuesday and Thursday to meet friends, socialise and have a bath.

Since she lost the use of her legs several years ago, she is too afraid to use her own, tub so the only time she has a full-body wash is once a week – if centre staff are free.

Mrs Tully, who lives in West Hanney, said: “I don’t know where I would be without it.

“I only get one bath a week because I can have it here. I live alone and I daren’t get into my bath.

“I love it at the day centre. I have made some very special friends here and I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

The Friends of Wantage Health & Wellbeing Centre already volunteer to keep it running.

Val Urso-Cale, 70, said: “I don’t want to stay at home with a cup of tea, and neither do the people who come here. They need people to talk to, they need conversations.”

The council would save about £3m a year by closing seven health and wellbeing centres and cutting funding to day services for the elderly.

Among those services is Wantage’s October Club. To look after clients with varying degrees of Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, it receives a grant from the council to pay trained carers assisted by volunteers.

The overall running of the club is the responsibility of trustees and a management committee – also volunteers.

Management committee chairwoman Maggie Swain said: “The October Club provides a much-needed break for carers and families who have someone with the illness.

“ Our current yearly grant would only cover one person for 28 weeks in a nursing home, whereas we care for up to 12 people a day, three days a week, for 50 weeks a year.”

The authority is consulting on its plans until November 30, and a final decision is due early next year.

It is also currently consulting on plans to close 44 children’s centres and replace them with up to eight family centres.

Oxfordshire county councillor for Wantage, Jenny Hannaby, is working with all the centres to find long-term solutions to the cuts.

She warned: “These are short-term cuts which are going to cost in the long-term – we really need some joined-up thinking.”

You can give your views on the proposed cuts online at consultations.oxfordshire.gov.uk.