A 95-year-old woman whose residential care home is facing the axe has become the face of a postcard campaign to urge people to fight the closures.

Great-grandmother Nellie Walker is deaf and suffers from dementia, angina, glaucoma and arthritis. She has been a resident at Knowl Park House in Mirfield for two years.

The home is earmarked for closure by Kirklees Council but her daughter and son-in-law are fighting it.

And campaigners hope to get thousands of members of the public to send protest postcards to the Council.

Brian Hoodless, Mrs Walker's son-in-law, said she was settled at Knowl Park House.

"She gets upset if we take her out," said the 63-year-old. "She once had to go to the hospital and she wanted to get straight back to Knowl Park. She plods about with her walking frame and the place is familiar to her. If she's moved out she'll be very upset and I don't think she'll live long."

The futures of five Council-run homes has just been reviewed, including Claremont House in Heckmondwike, Knowle Park House and Ings Grove House in Mirfield and two in Huddersfield.

After consultation, the Council has chosen a £4 million modernisation package which will see some homes turned into day care and resource centres, but the two Mirfield homes are set to close.

Mr Hoodless and his wife Shirley, 62, are members of the Relatives' Action Group for the Elderly (RAGE) who meet at the Old Hall pub in Heckmondwike. In conjunction with public service union Unison, RAGE has had thousands of postcards printed featuring Mrs Walker and a letter on the reverse addressed to Sylvia Smithson, cabinet member for Kirklees Social Services.

"We are getting a stall in Huddersfield and Dewsbury and asking people to sign these," said Mr Hoodless. "We will send them all to Coun Smithson ourselves."

He said Kirklees Council wanted to move people into Claremont House in Heckmondwike.

"Where people from Claremont will go, I don't know," said Mr Hoodless, of Mount Street, Cleckheaton. "This is all wrong. The carers at Knowl Park and at the other Council-run homes are excellent. I understand there are 20 residents leaving Knowl Park plus ten who attend day care."

Coun Smithson said Knowl Park House was to close as a residential home and be run as a day centre instead. She said residents would move to Claremont House in Heckmondwike, where more rooms were being made available. She said Claremont would cater specially for residents with dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

Last week a meeting was held between Council chiefs and solicitor Yvonne Hossack - acting on behalf of some of the residents' families - in a bid to persuade them to alter course.

l Threelands Grange in Birkenshaw and Eddercliffe Grange in Liversedge are among five homes that have already closed. A further seven in Kirklees are due to be reviewed next year.