Category Archives: Social fairness

Crisis in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service – funding falls while young people’s mental illness and self harm rise

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Calderdale Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service has suffered funding cuts at a time of increased referrals due to rising rates of mental illness and self harm among young people in Calderdale.

In 2013, one in five of Years 7/10 had self harmed, with rates highest among year 10 girls (one in three of whom had self harmed). In 2012/13, Calderdale hospital admissions for self-harm among young people between the ages of 10 and 24 were worse than the England average. [info source: CMBC  Plan for Commissioning Services for Children and Young People in Calderdale 2014-16]

A recent report from West and South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw Commissioning Support Unit (CSU) states that there is a high risk that the Child & Adolescent Mental Health Teams, run by the mental health Trust in Calderdale clinics since April 2013, may not be able to adequately meet patients’ needs. Continue reading →

Global company buys out #Calderdale Royal Hospital PFI company, to profit from  “facilities management” contract

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“Facilities management” at Calderdale Royal Hospital is part of the Private Finance Initiative contract. This means that the hospitals Trust has to use the PFI Facilities Management company for all the buildings and grounds maintenance.

The Trust also has to pay the PFI non-clinical services company for services such as cleaning, catering, laundry and linen, car parking, security, switchboard services and portering.

Until July this year, Lendlease Facilities Management (aka Vita Lendlease) held the CRH PFI Facilities Management Contract. But then Cofely-GDF Suez bought Lendlease Facilities Management. (Update: IN 2016, Cofely-GDF Suez became Engie.)

The hospitals Trust had no say over this buy-out, or which company holds the CRH PFI contract for facilities management (FM).

Continue reading →

Let the people set the agenda for the remaining NHS debates by Calder Valley parliamentary politicians

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The first NHS debate between Calder Valley parliamentary hopefuls and the current MP Craig Whitaker ran along familiar lines.  The politicians repeated what they have already said several times in other situations.

There were only two unexpected comments.

  • Craig Whitaker MP accused Labour Parliamentary Candidate Josh Fenton Glynn of “schoolboy politics”, instead of repeating his earlier slur that Josh was a “stick of celery”.
  • The LibDem Parliamentary Candidate, Alisdair McGregor, said that in the next Coalition Government, which he seemed confident would happen, LibDems would push for the widespread roll out of Personal Health Budgets (despite the fact that the Dutch experience of Personal Health Budgets has been that they led to escalating costs and widespread abuse, with the result that the Dutch have radically reduced their availability – which Mr McGregor didn’t mention.)

Continue reading →

Labour Conference disallows resolution to restore the NHS

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On Sunday 21st September, Save Calderdale Hospital and Huddersfield Keep Our NHS Public campaigners went to lobby the Labour Party Conference to adopt a resolution to restore the NHS.

But the Labour Conference Arrangements Committee ruled the resolution out of order and refused to allow it to be put to the Conference. Continue reading →

Rhubarb rhubarb for two hours as Calderdale NHS commissioners outwit Councillors’ scrutiny of shake-up plans

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A dismayed member of the public who attended the 17th September Scrutiny Panel meeting, where Councillors allowed themselves to be outwitted over Calderdale NHS commissioners’ plans to delay public consultation on the NHS shake-up, said,

“They might as well have been saying rhubarb rhubarb for two hours, for all the use that meeting was.”

There is an overview report of the meeting here.

For anyone who has the stomach for rhubarb, here is a more verbatim account. It covers

  • The CCG’s evasiveness about whether it will dump the hospitals Trust as the provider of existing community health services, and switch to buying them from private companies or 3rd sector/voluntary organisations.
  • The Scrutiny Panel’s failure to use its power to decide whether the CCG’s plan to re-specify and re-purchase existing community health services by the end of this year would significantly change existing NHS services in Calderdale and so require public consultation.
  • The timeframe for costing Phase 2 community health services, which will happen over the next 3 months. Phase 2 would involve taking services for frail elderly people with multiple illnesses out of hospital and into the community or people’s homes.

Continue reading →

NHS commissioners hoodwink Council Scrutiny Panel over setting up Care Closer to Home without public consultation

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Yesterday Calderdale Adults Health and Social Care Scrutiny Panel members failed to use their power to decide whether the Calderdale NHS Commissioners need to consult the public about the new community health care system they are in the process of setting up.

Instead they have given the nod to the CCG to go ahead with their plans and report back to the Scrutiny Panel later.

Members of the public said they had now lost faith in the Scrutiny Panel’s ability or willingness to use its powers to protect the NHS in Calderdale.

One member of the public said,

“They might as well have been saying rhubarb rhubarb for two hours, for all the use that meeting was.”

Continue reading →

Yorkshire Ambulance Service boss says work has stalled on implications of proposed A&E closure

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Andrew Simpson, Yorkshire Ambulance Service (YAS) Trust’s Head of A&E Operations for Bradford, Calderdale and Kirklees, told a Calderdale Council “People’s Commission” meeting yesterday that Calderdale Royal Hospital is the destination of 95% of ambulance trips in Calderdale.

But in response to a question from a member of Calderdale 38 Degrees NHS campaign, he could not say if information had been collected about the extra number of ambulances and staff that would be needed if Halifax A&E closed – creating longer traveling times – and how much that would cost.

NHS Commissioners’ plans to make changes to community health and social care without public consultation have put both the Ambulance and the Hospitals Trusts on the back foot. Continue reading →

Calderdale NHS Bosses’ AGM whitewash

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Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group – the organisation that decides what NHS services people in Calderdale have access to, and which organisations provide them – gave a highly selective version of events at its first AGM, held at the Threeways centre in Ovenden yesterday.

The Secretary of State Jeremy Hunt has told NHS clinical staff that they owe a duty of candour to their patients and must tell them the truth.

Surely this duty applies to NHS commissioners as well?

Calderdale CCG failed this test at its AGM.

Airbrushed out – massive public opposition to planned hospital cuts never happened Continue reading →

Sunday 21st September – Lobby the Labour Party Conference to Save the NHS

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999 Call For The NHS and Walk for the NHS  have both called for people to put pressure on all the political parties to adopt policies that will restore the NHS to its core founding principles and stop and reverse cuts and privatisation.

This is on the principle that no political party currently has policies that will stop the NHS cuts and sell offs. At the Trafalgar Square rally at the end of the Jarrow to London People’s March, Darlo mum Jo Adams said,

“The only people we can trust with the NHS is each other.”

On Sunday 21st September at 2.30pm, people are lobbying the Labour Party Conference in Manchester to Save the NHS. All are welcome to take part. Continue reading →

Tales from Walk for the NHS – stop cuts and sell offs that hurt patients and staff

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Walk for the NHS set off from Calderdale Royal Hospital on Friday 22nd August, arrived at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary around midday and after a rally in George Square Huddersfield,  carried on to Dewsbury District Hospital. We arrived in the early evening to a great welcome from Save Dewsbury Hospital campaigners, the GMB, and Mike Wood MP. Continue reading →