Please help us today. We are the residents of the Queen Elizabeth Foundation’s Dorincourt care home in Leatherhead, Surrey, and have been told to leave our home by July 31.

The news came as a terrible shock to us, we are devastated, along with our families and friends. We have been told to vacate because the QEF want to sell our home to pay off a £2.6 million pensions deficit.

“It is very wrong, and we want the public to help us to stop the closure,” says Wendy, who has lived at Dorincourt for 32 years. 

“We live as one big family. Why should Dorincourt be closed when there are other options the QEF could take.”

“I’m losing my friends and my home. Please stay open so that this nightmare will end,” says Matthew, 31, who has lived at Dorincourt for 11 years. “I have not found anywhere else to live yet and I am scared about my future.”

There are 38 of us adults living in the care home, many of us for years. We all have complex physical support and health needs; we use wheelchairs and require 24-hour care. Some of us also live with a learning disability.

We started this petition with our families and friends to save Dorincourt and to ask the QEF, which is a charity set up with the support of the Queen Mother in 1935, to reconsider its decision. Our campaign group, called “Save Dorincourt”, is convinced that our suggestion to sell the QEF’s headquarters at Leatherhead Court, which is for administrative staff, and move it to rented offices in the town centre, is the best option to pay off the £2.6 million pensions deficit.

We have also put forward a range of proposals to the QEF as solutions to the other reasons it has given us for the closure, namely, underfunding, a local authority payment shortfall, building refurbishments and staff shortages. We also want the charity to consider a bid from a potential a new owner who wants to keep it as a residential home rather than it be closed. We are convinced a solution can be found to keep us in our home.

The QEF said it would work with Surrey Adult Social Care and its brokerage team to find us new accommodation, but what they have offered us is not suitable. Most of us prefer to live in a large care home with long wide corridors as it means we can move around in our power chairs and wheelchairs independently, which gives us more access to places. But there are too few large residential care homes, with local authorities preferring much smaller ones, which are not suitable for all physically disabled people with additional needs. It is not “one size fits all”.

We are heartbroken at the thought of losing our home and splitting up our Dorincourt “family”. We are calling on the CEO and the Trustees of the QEF that run the home to reverse its decision and find a way to keep Dorincourt residential care home open.

Please help us. This could be your relative or friend. We ask you to sign our petition and help put pressure on the decision makers to find a solution to stop us from being forced to move. We can do this together.

Thank you so much.