Author Archives: jenny

Chucking a steak to the HealthWatch dog?

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How can an organisation funded by Calderdale Council – and, indirectly, central government – be expected to act as an independent, public watchdog for Calderdale Council public health policies, strategies and actions, and for the NHS purchasing decisions of the new Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group?

If you share these doubts, you might want to get in touch with Calderdale Save Our Services and/or your local Councillor.

Calderdale Council has awarded the £302k 2013-2015 contract for Local HealthWatch to Voluntary Action Calderdale, who bid for it in 2012.

The Coalition government’s Health and Safety Act 2012 requires Councils to fund a Local HealthWatch group. This is supposed to be “the consumer champion within the new NHS and social care arrangements, providing influence, signposting and advocacy for service users”, according to a Calderdale Cabinet Report of 10 December 2012. Continue reading →

Ten things we’ll miss now the NHS has been gutted

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This post is copied (with some omissions and a slightly altered title) from Just Plain Sense Blogs by Christine Burns MBE , licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License. See Google for author details.

 

Incredible Edible Mytholm surveys business impacts of proposed supermarket & hotel

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Incredible Edible Mytholm (IEM) members and supporters braved the snow on Sunday afternoon to deliver Hebden Bridge Retailers Survey questionnaires to 77 town centre businesses.

Judi,Myra and Chris on Market Street, with the Hebden Bridge Retailers Survey

The survey aims to find out what impacts businesses think the proposed supermarket and hotel development at the Mytholm Works site will have on them and their local suppliers. IEM is carrying out the Survey with assistance from Chris Beebe, the Coop’s Planning Manager North.
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Top Stories Jan 4-18

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Over the last 2 weeks 1403 visitors read posts on Changing More Than Lightbulbs.

Top stories over last 2 weeks:

Keep the NHS Public, say Calderdale SOS and 38 Degrees

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Calderdale Save Our Services and the Calderdale 38 Degrees group lobbied the January 17th meeting of the ‘shadow’ Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and urged them to do their utmost to keep the NHS as a publicly-provided service.

The new Health and Social Care Act requires that on 1st April 2013 Calderdale CCG will take over Calderdale NHS from Calderdale Primary Care Trust, together with Calderdale Council which will take responsibility for public health. The main role of Calderdale CCG is to commission health services – in other words, to decide who will actually provide services to patients and who will get paid for doing this.

There is a widespread public anxiety that these changes will privatise the NHS by the back door.
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