A CONTROVERSIAL cut to home care for the elderly and disabled has seen only a tiny fraction of people lose their entitlement, it has emerged.

Campaigners fighting the cut - designed to slash £1.57 million a year from Bradford Council's social care bill - are now questioning whether it has saved any money at all.

Liberal Democrat group leader Councillor Jeanette Sunderland, who has been campaigning against the changes, reacted angrily to the news, saying hundreds of families had been put through needless stress and anxiety.

She said: "Why did they put so many people through so much misery? People were terrified of losing care."

In April, the Council raised the threshold for when vulnerable people are entitled to help with tasks such as washing, eating and dressing in their own homes.

People with moderate needs no longer qualify for support, only those whose needs are classed as substantial or critical under a classification system called Fair Access to Care.

The raising of the threshold was expected to affect about 2,000 people across the district, with about 70 people expected to lose their care entirely.

Since April, the Council has started a major programme of reassessing service users to see whether they still qualified for care under the new rules - even taking on more staff to help with the workload.

But so far, out of 1,300 people who have been reassessed, only nine have had their care packages axed - less than 1 per cent of those visited.

Some people's needs were found to have increased, meaning they met the new, higher threshold, a new Council report says.

The authority has not yet revealed how much money the exercise has saved so far.

Cllr Sunderland has been running a campaign against the cuts called Bradford Cares, alongside Bradford and District Disabled People's Forum and Bradford East MP David Ward (Lib Dem).

Emmerson Walgrove, deputy chairman of Bradford and District Disabled People's Forum, said: "The whole idea of them moving from moderate to substantial or critical was because they wanted to save money. But with nine people, how much has that saved?"

Mr Ward also raised similar concerns, saying it appeared the Council still did not know "how much money these callous cuts will actually save".

And Councillor Jackie Whiteley, the Conservative Group's spokesman for adult services, said she was concerned the whole exercise could have actually cost more money than it had saved.

She said while she was glad that only nine people had lost their entitlement to care, she was concerned that the Council "may have spent more than it has saved because the report says that more staff have been employed".

She added: "The cost saving may be much less than anticipated and begs the question - is this the right place to save money?"

But Councillor Amir Hussain, executive member for adult services at the Labour-controlled Council, defended the changes.

He said the authority had maintained all along that most of the savings would be made by restricting the number of new people being offered home care.

He said: "The real saving will come from new people coming into the system.

"We have always been saying that this is about managing the future demand. Not for one minute have we ever thought that because of the number of 'moderates' we had, all these services were going to get stopped, and that's where the saving is.

"It has been made very clear from day one that it is about managing the future demand."

Cllr Hussain said it also showed that contrary to what campaigners had been saying beforehand, very few current service users had lost their care because of the changes.

Although adult social care is rarely provided free-of-charge, it is usually heavily subsidised and it is one of Bradford Council's largest areas of spending.

Most local authorities across the country already restrict care to those with substantial or critical needs, and this is also likely to become a national threshold when the new Care Act comes into force next year.

In June, it was revealed that even after these recent changes had been factored in, Bradford's health and social care services still faced a funding shortfall of a staggering £364 million over the next five years.

The impact of Bradford Council's decision to raise the threshold will be discussed by the Council's health and social care overview and scrutiny committee tomorrow.

The report going before the meeting says there have been no complaints about any of the reviews undertaken so far, and no appeals against changes in the levels of support being provided.

The committee meets at 4pm at Bradford City Hall.