A WOMAN with terminal cancer who is forced to travel 50 miles a day to visit her ill mother has renewed calls for a ward to be reopened in Kendal.

Jackie Blower, 58, says she is “exhausted” with making the daily trip to Ulverston, where her 81 year-old mother Jean is on a dementia unit.

Mrs Blower is having treatment for breast cancer and says as she cannot drive.

She said her life has been taken over by finding transport to Gill Rise.

She wants to see mental health bosses reopen a unit at Kendal’s Westmorland General Hospital, which closed two years ago.

She said: “Mum was diagnosed last summer but her condition had deteriorated and she was sectioned earlier this month.

"With the ward closed at WGH we were told she would be sent to Ulverston.

"We had to wait two weeks until there was a bed for her and now we are faced with travelling 55 miles to see her every day which is draining.

“Dementia patients need familiar surroundings and need contact with loved ones.

"I know being in Kendal wouldn’t mean she would recover, but it would improve her day-to-day life.

“It’s very difficult. I don’t drive and have to rely on a friend to take my sister and I to see mum.

"It’s traumatic and travelling every day is tiring. We only get to spend an hour with her whereas if mum was in Kendal we would go and see her twice a day.”

Westmorland and Lonsdale MP Tim Farron said: “There are a lot of people in this situation and a fresh look needs to be taken at how we provide dementia care.”

Kath Hughes, of Cumbria Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, which provides mental health care across the county, said the trust recognised travelling to see loved-ones presented difficulties but that it was working to improve services in the community.

She said: “We cannot hospitalise everybody with dementia and it is not in their best interest to do so as patients do better when they are at home and close to family.

“We aim to return patients to their own environments as quickly as possible by increasing community support, not hospital-based care.

“Gill Rise is not a permanent base for patients. We do recognise the problems that relatives and carers may have with travel.

“Unfortunately (for Kendal patients) we have one dementia unit in the south of the county and it is based in Ulverston.”