Deborah Harrington, National Health Action Party campaigner, provides some context for those who don’t get the point of the NHS Bill and think there is no problem with Labour not turning up to support it.
The first problem of note is Simon Stevens. Continue reading
The South West Yorkshire mental Health Trust has withdrawn redundancy notices they’d sent to Art Psychotherapy Staff, as campaigners have forced a halt to the proposed closure of Calderdale Art Therapy service. This now has to go to public consultation.
The service helps around 60 people with mental health problems and a service user instructed specialist lawyers at Irwin Mitchell to help the campaigners fight the proposed closure after staff were given redundancy notices.
Irwin Mitchell wrote to South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the service challenging the closure, based on an alleged failure to consult service users on the change. Continue reading
Craig Whittaker has posted his refusal to constituents’ requests that he vote for the cross-party NHS (Reinstatement) Bill at its second reading in the House of Commons on 11 March.
His refusal includes the claim that:
“…an authoritative comparative study of the performance of different national health systems recently concluded that the NHS, from 2010 to 2015 was the best health service in the world.”
Here is Craig Whittaker’s refusal to vote for the NHS Bill: Continue reading
At the Hands off HRI Rally on Saturday 27th February, Jason McCartney MP said he would do everything in his power to keep the hospital open.
So the Chair of North Kirklees Support the NHS, Christine Hyde, said to him:
“Well in that case you could go to the House on 11 March and debate the cross party Bill called the NHS Bill and vote for it.”
Ms Hyde reported that Mr McCartney told her that if he was able to, he would.
However, Mr McCartney later told Plain Speaker:
“I have said on no occasion that I would support this Bill. On checking my diary I have commitments in the constituency that day so will not be able to attend the debate or vote either way on it. Continue reading
The Clinical Commissioning Groups have finally published their travel analysis of the effects of closing Huddersfield A&E, which also includes modelling based on the closure of Dewsbury A&E.
We are still no closer to knowing whether the already overstretched and struggling Yorkshire Ambulance Service is going to be able to cope with the extra 10,071.86 hours journey time/year that would result from the closure of Huddersfield and Dewsbury A&Es, because the travel analysis doesn’t say anything about this, apart from the no-brainer that
“It is recommended that… YAS examine the findings of this report…”
Right when proposals are afoot to cut hospital services on the grounds that it’s better for patients to have “Care Closer to Home”, users of an NHS community-based Art Psychotherapy service in Calderdale are fighting to save it from closure after the therapists were given compulsory redundancy notices over the Christmas period.
If the redundancies go ahead then vulnerable people with complex mental health problems will have their therapy terminated prematurely on the 31st March with no suitable alternative in place for them. Continue reading
In her deputation statement to the Calderdale & Kirklees Joint Health Scrutiny Committee yesterday, the Chair of Calderdale 38 Degrees NHS Campaign warned of the risk that the plan to move many services out of the hospitals into the “community” would repeat the the disastrous Care in the Community scheme of the 1980s/90s, that resulted from the closure of mental health hospitals.
Jane Rendle told Councillors:
“Once the hospitals had closed, funding for mental health Care in the Community was whittled away, leading to inadequate care and no hospital back up. Today we have the disastrous situation that sometimes there is not a single available mental health bed in the country.”
Now, history is repeating itself. Clinical Commissioning Groups are pushing the un-evidenced “Care Closer to Home scheme” – while effective and cost-efficient community mental health services are for the chop. Users of an NHS community-based Art Psychotherapy service in Calderdale are fighting to save it from closure after the therapists were given compulsory redundancy notices over the Christmas period.
And increasingly, mental health services are being privatised. Continue reading
At the shambolic Calderdale and Kirklees Joint Health Scrutiny Committee (JHSC) meeting on 29th January, the Chair Cllr Elizabeth Smaje said that p255 of the Pre Consultation Business Case refers to a journey time assessment study and the JHSC will have a meeting about that and would like that study to be made available asap to JHSC.
This study is the Clinical Commissioning Groups’ travel impact analysis of their proposal to close one of our A&Es.
Since 4th February, I have repeatedly asked Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group for this document – so far to no avail. Update 26.2.16 – the CCGs have now made public their travel impact analysis. Continue reading
This is the 7th Plain Speaker report on the hospital cuts plans that are scheduled for public consultation, starting at the end of February.
It looks at proposals for expanding Calderdale Royal Hospital into a 615 bed acute and emergency hospital – the only one in Calderdale and Kirklees.
The “Right Care Right Time Right Place” Pre Consultation Business Case could well be called “Less Care, Whenever and Wherever You Can Find It”
The basic plan is to
Terry Hallworth reports on the Greater Huddersfield Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) Governing Body meeting on 10th February
Update to Terry’s report
On 11th February Richard Dunne, Kirklees Scrutiny Officer, emailed that the draft Consultation Document and Questionaire will be publicly available on the Kirklees Council’s Joint Health Scrutiny Committee Webpage on 12th February (not the 15th as Greater Huddersfield CCG reported), along with the Agenda.
If you want to address the JHSC, tell Richard Dunne and he will put your name of the list of deputations. Further info from Richard Dunne is that the consultation will not proceed until this meeting has taken place.
The CCGs will be releasing the final draft of the Consultation Document on 12th February.
The CCGs and Joint Health Scrutiny Committee will have a public Scrutiny meeting on the 22 Feb, in the Council Chamber at Halifax Town Hall at 3.45pm
The Governing BodyChair, Dr Ollerton, and Carol McKenna, the CCG’s Chief Officer, will then sign off the document. That seems to presume no alterations will be necessary.
Consultation will then start on 27th Feb and will be for 14 weeks Continue reading