Category Archives: Social fairness

We want an NHS which is comprehensive. That means it doesn’t target people’s lifestyles and blame them for their illnesses.

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This is Deborah Harrington’s speech to the Fighting for Hartlepool Hospital rally on Saturday 15th October, as read by Steven Carne from 999 Call for the NHS

First of all I would like to say how sorry I am not to be here today.

I wanted to start by telling you about something I witnessed at a major London hospital recently after a physiotherapy appointment. I was at the bus stop, waiting for my bus home, when two security guards came out of A&E pushing a wheelchair. In it was a man who looked semi-comatose. At the bus stop one security guard tipped the wheelchair, while the other helped the man out. He couldn’t stand. They laid him down on the ground and left him there. It was a cold, wet day. His shirt and jacket were twisted up and I could see his back. It was covered in what looked like fresh burns. I called out to the security guards. They replied that he didn’t need emergency treatment so had no business being there. He was ‘just a drunk’. Continue reading →

Does Calderdale Health & Wellbeing Board know what it’s doing with NHS Sustainability and Transformation Plans?

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On 25 August, Calderdale Health and Wellbeing Board meeting discussed 3 documents about Sustainability and Transformation Plans, in order to decide whether to accept the following recommendations that the Health and Wellbeing Board had previously made at a private, un-minuted meeting with Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group on 11th August – that the Health and Wellbeing should:

  • “own” Calderdale’s contribution to the West Yorkshire Sustainability and Transformation Plan
  • agree a Calderdale Plan at a future meeting
  • establish a Calderdale Transformation Board to oversee the work on the development of a Calderdale Plan and report to the Health and Wellbeing Board.

Six weeks after the Health and Wellbeing Board meeting – and only two weeks before the 21st October deadline for submitting the final version of the Sustainability and Transformation Plan to NHS England – Cllr Tim Swift sent answers to 15 of the 38 questions about these three documents, that I had emailed to the Health and Wellbeing Board just before its meeting. Continue reading →

Discretionary Housing Payment is available if you’re struggling to pay rent

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Calderdale residents may be eligible for financial support if they are struggling to keep up with payments of rent.

You can apply online for DHP at www.calderdale.gov.uk/benefits or drop in at any Customer First office for an application form.

The Discretionary Housing Payment (DHP) scheme is an emergency fund which provides financial assistance whilst allowing people time to find alternative solutions. This is an additional payment on top of any housing benefit already received. Continue reading →

A month on, still waiting for Calderdale Health & Wellbeing Board answers to Sustainability and Transformation Plan questions

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There were 15 minutes for public questions at the 25th August Calderdale Health and Wellbeing Board meeting, which discussed recommendations about the Calderdale Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP), from a private meeting on 11th August between the Health and Wellbeing Board and Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group.

That meant only a handful of questions could be asked. The rest were meant to be answered in writing. A month on, no written answers have appeared. Continue reading →

Sustainability and Transformation Plans – the great NHS sell off by digitech woo merchants Stevens & Swindells

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Digitech is central to NHS Sustainability and Transformation Plans, says ex-Cerner Vice President turned NHS England Director.

What fresh revolving door horror is this?

Before he started his job at NHS England – pushing digitech as key to Sustainability and Transformation Plans –  Matthew Swindells was Senior Vice President  at the US health digitech company Cerner.

Continue reading →

Protest secret plans to cut and further privatise NHS – Halifax Town Hall, Thursday 25 August, 9.30am.

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A secret process to cut and further privatise NHS services is charging ahead across England. It goes under the name of Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs).

England has been divided into 44 Sustainability and Transformation Plan ‘footprints’ which must make huge spending and service cuts and increase NHS privatisation in order to access “transformation” funds.

STPs are being drawn up in conditions of secrecy imposed by NHS England. Their North Midlands Director of Commissioning Operations, Wendy Saviour, told a recent meeting of Shropshire Clinical Commissioning Group:

“STPs are not meant to be published at all. They should not go to Board meetings. Some of them contain very radical things… These are highly political and highly contentious…
Once they’re washed off and the national messages are gathered together, they will be published.”

Continue reading →

Secret, outlaw NHS “Sustainability and Transformation Plans” underway in West Yorkshire

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A secret process to cut NHS spending and services is galloping ahead across England.

If you think this is all a VERY BAD IDEA, please tell your MP and Councillors. And get in touch with Calderdale & Kirklees 999 Call for the NHS (CK999) or one of the other organisations in the CK999 network and help us campaign to stop and reverse NHS Cuts and sell offs.

Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs) are the enforcement mechanism to make NHS commissioners, hospitals and GPs carry out, at speed, the NHS spending cuts and increased NHS privatisation that are required by NHS England’s Five Year Forward View, 2015- 2020. Continue reading →

Restricting NHS treatments on cards for Calderdale

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The Chief Officer’s Report to the 11 August Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) Governing Body meeting – to be held at Shay Stadium from 2-5pm – states that the CCG is short of money this year, and that the CCG may have to consider:

“more challenging areas for generating cost savings”

eg:

  • reducing outpatient follow ups to a single follow up appointment to an elective treatment
  • 
stopping prescribing medicines for self-limiting illnesses, vitamins, food supplements and gluten-free diets
  • cherry picking patients for medical and surgical treatments, so that only those who are most likely to benefit receive them. (Update 13 August: At the 11 August Calderdale CCG Governing Body, Matt Walsh the Chief Officer clarified that limiting medical and surgical interventions to patients most likely to benefit would only apply to “procedures of limited value”, where only certain patients will benefit – not across the board.)

This is what happens when you remove the Secretary of State’s duty to provide a comprehensive, universal health service – as the 2012 Health and Social Care Act did; and then drastically underfund the NHS – as the Coalition and Tory governments have done since 2010.

Continue reading →

Huge new cuts to our hospitals from October

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At their August 11th meeting (2pm, Shay Stadium, Halifax), Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group Governing Body will face truly chilling facts about the effects of so-called Sustainability and Transformation Plans, which will start to be carried out in October/November this year.

If you think this is all a VERY BAD IDEA, please tell your MP and Councillors. And get in touch with Calderdale and Kirklees 999 Call for the NHS (CK999) or one of the other organisations in the CK999 network and help us campaign to stop and reverse NHS Cuts and sell offs. Continue reading →

Bain Capital profits hugely from sale of privatised NHS plasma supplier to Chinese investment group

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A Chinese investment group, Creat, has just bought the privatised NHS plasma supplier from Bain Capital – only three years after the American private equity firm bought the NHS’s Plasma Resources UK from the Department of Health in 2013.

This privatisation evaded Parliamentary scrutiny, as it was announced just as MPs were about to take six weeks holiday.It  involved the sale of 80% of Plasma Resources UK’s equity to the US private equity firm Bain Capital for £90m, plus a Bain Capital Investment of an extra £50m in the firm to create a “UK Life Sciences Champion.”

Continue reading →