A father-of-two whose legs and arms were amputated following a near-fatal battle with sepsis is being evicted from his care home because the council insist he "no longer requires the service".
Scott McQuade, 50, said he was stunned by the "heartless" actions of Renfrewshire Council after being told they are initiating formal proceedings to remove him from Montrose Care Home in Paisley.
Mr McQuade, an IT specialist who now relies on an electric wheelchair after losing his lower legs, left forearm, and right hand, has been on a temporary placement at the council-owned premises since November 2023 because his family home in Bishopton - which he shares with wife, Fiona, and their daughters aged nine and 12 - is currently unsuitable.
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The care home is due to close within months as a result of cost-cutting measures voted through in March by Renfrewshire's Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP).
Mr McQuade previously turned down the offer of a ground floor council flat in Renfrew because adaptations - such as lowering the kitchen units to make them reachable for a wheelchair-user - would not be funded unless he planned to stay there permanently, whereas Mr McQuade wishes to return to his family home.
However, the property currently has no downstairs bedroom or accessible bathroom, which means he would have to sleep in the living room and wash using a sink.
Mr and Mrs McQuade, a nurse, proposed converting their garage into a bedroom for Mr McQuade and creating a downstairs wet room, but the council said it could only part-fund either adaptations to the downstairs bathroom along with a bed or install a stairlift with changes to make the upstairs bathroom accessible.
Mr McQuade said the latter option would leave him "trapped" and overly-reliant on carers since he would be unable to use the stairlift without help and would require a second electric wheelchair to move around upstairs, which the couple would also have to buy.
Following a report by The Herald in April about the family's ordeal, a friend of Mr McQuade set up a GoFundMe appeal online which has raised £28,000 out of a £40,000 target in just three weeks.
The McQuades are using the donations to fund the garage conversion and downstairs wet room themselves.
They are already finalising plans with an architect and hope that by skipping the "red tape" involved in applying for council grants that the process can be completed over the summer.
However, Mr McQuade - who is under the care of Renfrewshire's mental health crisis team, IHTT (Intensive Home Treatment Team), due to the trauma of the past 18 months - said he now fears he will be forced to "live on a building site" without proper access to a toilet and at increased risk of wound infections if he is forced out of Montrose Care Home.
He had already been told, in a letter handed to him on May 9, that he would be charged more than £600 a week unless he left the premises because the terms of his free, interim placement there had expired.
Mr McQuade wrote to the council on May 14 appealing for "breathing space for me and my family to complete our home adaptations", noting that they were saving the public purse money by completing the works with fundraising cash.
Mr McQuade - who hopes eventually to return to his work in IT - added that the changes being made to the family home mean he will be able "to live independently" without home care services.
The council refused to back down, however, and in an email dated May 15 from a solicitor in its finance department, Mr McQuade was told he is "able to be cared for at home".
It continued: "It follows that there is no basis for the Council to seek variation of its registration in regard to Montrose, in order to provide care for you there. You should remove from Montrose immediately.
"The Council has now instructed my team to raise formal proceedings for your removal and this will be progressed shortly."
Mr McQuade said: "They're not seeing me as an individual, I'm just a number.
"I thought I was offering a fair compromise - we'll pay for the work, we'll save you money in the long run, but just let me stay here a wee while longer without charging me.
"A matter of weeks. The home is closing anyway.
"It's quite astonishing really, the heartlessness of it."
In recent weeks, Mr McQuade said the stress of the situation has left him feeling "so low" that he has refused food.
He said: "My mood has been low - really low - because I'm just getting frustrated, and it's all because of the social work.
"It's like arguing with a toddler. Sometimes it feels like I'm getting punished for having survived in ICU.
"I need to get home. I want to get home. To start getting back to some kind of normality - my new normality. I miss my girls - I've missed so much."
Mr McQuade went to A&E on Christmas Eve 2022 after a tiny cut on his finger became infected.
Within hours he was unconscious and fighting for his life after going into septic shock.
Doctors did not expect him to survive into Christmas Day.
After almost dying several times, he pulled through but in February 2023 doctors had to amputate his limbs to save his life.
He remained in hospital in Glasgow until August 2023 but suffered a nervous breakdown within days of being discharged home and was re-admitted to a mental health unit.
His wounds are yet to fully heal, meaning Mr McQuade cannot be fitted for prosthetic limbs.
Nonetheless, Mr McQuade - who was a keen runner and karate Black Belt before his illness - is determined to get back to work, stressing that he does not "want to live off the system".
He has found solace at the Paisley hub run by amputees' charity, Finding Your Feet.
Its founder, Cor Hutton MBE - also a quadruple amputee as a result of sepsis - has been supporting the McQuades.
She told the Herald that her pleas to senior council officials and politicians on their behalf have "got nowhere".
She said: "Scott has had things much harder than I had in his situation. His wounds won’t heal and he can’t get fitted for prosthetics until they do.
"His knees are affected so he can’t crawl like I did to get upstairs or into the toilet (like I still do) and can’t transfer easily through lack of hands.
"He’s lost more arm than me so can’t reach to clean himself and his home set up stops him being able to live humanely.
"Fiona has had to cope for 18 months with two distraught kids who thought they’d lost their Dad, Scott suffering in hospital, her demanding job and both have been really tested mentally while they have to fight for every bit of help that should be available to them automatically.
"To date they’ve had very little and it’s caused so much frustration and anxiety."
Ms Hutton added that the proposals put forward by the council "would cost the taxpayer thousands yet wouldn’t help him".
She said: "[Scott is] asking them to use those funds to keep a roof over his head while he gets all the adaptions done, which he is doing without cost or effort to the council.
"Montrose home is closing but has several residents still living there so it sounds like a reasonable request to me.
"The end result in a few weeks time would leave Scott independent and capable of living without social work help."
A spokesman for Renfrewshire HSCP said that Mr McQuade had "chosen to reject all offers of support provided" and that it "cannot pay for services for individuals which they are not assessed as requiring".
He added: “Mr McQuade has completed the course of rehabilitation offered and the variation of registration has come to an end.
"He is therefore no longer eligible to receive a service at Montrose Care Home - both because he no longer needs that service and because the home is no longer registered to provide it to him.
"It is for these reasons that he has been asked to leave.
"Mr McQuade is able to return home with support - and our team has provided a variety of options for him to choose from."
Mr McQuade added that he has been "flabbergasted" by donations to the GoFundMe appeal.
He said: "I really do want to thank people. There's been donations from people who don't know me, from people I haven't seen in years.
"People have been so generous, especially with the cost of living.
"It's unbelievable. There is goodness in the world."
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