Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group Governing Body meeting, which is open to the public and press, is at 2-5pm, Thursday 10th April, in Shibden Meeting Room, F Mill, Dean Clough, Halifax.

Agenda and meeting documents are online here.

Upper Calder Valley Plain Speaker has emailed these questions for the Governing Body to answer at the meeting:

1) How can the CCG expect the public to believe that no decision has yet been made about the preferred option (2) of the Strategic Review/Strategic Outline Case? Given that:

• most of the proposed division between the two hospitals has already happened, according to what Martin De Bono said in the March 2013 CCCG Governing Body meeting, with mostly unplanned care already taking place in CRH and most acute care in HRI
• CHFT staff were told at a briefing on the Strategic Review that CHFT aims to have bulldozers on site for the new building by January 2015, and at the latest before the May 2015 election
• the joint venture property development company that CHFT has set up with Henry Boot Development is already building a new outpatients’ department on the Acre Mill site, and it looks as if this is freeing up space at HRI for the new build needed to accommodate the changes foreseen in Option 2
• through the Better Care Fund, Calderdale Council and Calderdale CCG are setting up the integrated health and social care in the community system this year
• Calderdale CCG’s 5 Year Strategic Plan states that it is the CCCG’s contribution to delivering the Strategic Review and it starts now.

2) How is Calderdale CCG recording public questions and comments at engagement events? I attended an engagement event at Calder ward forum where the engagement lead said several times that she was trying to make a note of people’s comments and questions, while also trying to do the presentation and answer questions and comments. Why wasn’t anyone there to make an accurate, full record of comments and questions? Is the record of this and (other engagement events) available for public scrutiny?
3) Calderdale CCG has said that it thinks about 60 people in Calderdale are eligible for personal healthcare budgets, so why does the whole integrated health and social care in the community model revolve around a patient at home in control of their care through a personal budget, when their are only around 60 eligible people?  How will anticipated £50m savings from the RCRTRP system be achieved when the number of continuing care patients is so small?

Continuing healthcare patient at centre of care in the community, holding personal budget

4) How many job losses will there be as a result of the SOC proposals? (The SOC says that one of the “key enablers” of the “savings opportunity” is job cuts –

“realignment of the current workforce to the revised model will impact on the number of people employed. Given 70% of costs currently relate to pay in order to achieve the level of savings required the overall paybill will need to reduce…”)

5) Given that the Council is investigating VAC’s contract for Calderdale Healthwatch because of VAC’s vested interest in the implementation of the Right Care Right Time Right Place (RCRTRP) proposals through its receipt of the Health Connections £750K grant from the CCCG, how is it appropriate for Calderdale Healthwatch to be hosting “engagement” events for RCRTRP?