Privatised wheelchair service complaint still unresolved after 5 months

Posted on by
2

Fern Bast has good reason to celebrate and praise the NHS in Calderdale. She recently had an amazing, successful operation to repair her damaged, degenerating spine and it is now repairing itself.

However, her experience with Opcare, the company that runs the recently privatised Wheelchair Service, has been less happy – to the extent that in March this year she made a formal complaint to Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) about the completely inappropriate conditions she found, when she attended the Opcare outreach clinic at Beechwood Medical Centre in Halifax, for a fitting for a powered chair.

5 months on, Calderdale CCG has still not got to the bottom of the problem. Continue reading →

Renegotiate hospital PFI debts to fair value and use criminal prosecution where necessary

Posted on by
10

Jeremy Corbyn has called for the Labour party in opposition to campaign for a fund to be set up to bail out NHS trusts from PFI schemes that were forced upon them under the New Labour government.

This is in line with the current draft of the 2015 NHS Reinstatement Bill, that Jeremy Corbyn has co-sponsored as a Private Members Bill along with Caroline Lucas MP and other MPs.

The Bill is due to receive its second reading on 11 March 2016 and it’s vital that all opposition MPs support it – as well as Conservative MPs who respect the wishes of the 77% of Tory supporters who want a publicly-owned and run NHS.

However, not all supporters of the NHS Reinstatement Bill are happy with the section that calls for removal of PFI debts from hospitals and centralisation of the debts in the Treasury, and discussions are underway about proposed amendments to this bit of the Bill.

This is because removing PFI debts from hospitals (which is also the aim of Corbyn’s proposal of fund to buy out the hospital Trusts’ PFI debts) doesn’t do anything to tackle the inappropriate PFI debts, and it helps the PFI lenders launder debts which were arrived at in inappropriate situations – as work by Professor Allyson Pollock documents. Continue reading →

NHS bosses’ listening event that wasn’t – oh, and there are “no proposals” for NHS cuts and changes

Posted on by
2

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – – that’s all.”

I gained entry to Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group’s 20th August Stakeholder Engagement Event only after picketing it, along with other members of the general public.

A Councillor Councillor recently told NHS bosses they “should seek a wider basis of opinion about their plans” – instead of confining their “engagement” to “people inside the goldfish bowl.”

So there we were, offering a wider basis of opinion. But would the people inside the goldfish bowl be able to hear us? Continue reading →

Protesters belie NHS bosses’ claim there’s NO public opposition to hospital cuts and changes plans

Posted on by
Reply

Members of the public protested outside the August 13th meeting of Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group’s Governing Body, as the NHS bosses met to consider “evidence” of their “engagement” with the public about plans to cut acute and emergency hospital services and replace them with care the community, aka Care Closer to Home. Continue reading →

Call for landowners to stop upland heather burning as new research shows link to increased flood risk

Posted on by
3

New research from Leeds University into the impacts of permitted heather burning on upland peat bog shows that for the 20% biggest storms, the flow of water over land is higher than in areas where the moorland has not been burnt.

This will contribute to “flashy” river flows in the valleys below the moors, with the water level rising quickly and causing flooding. Continue reading →

Hospitals Trust director promises fewer patients will be stuck in hospital

Posted on by
Reply

Calderdale attracted national attention earlier this year as one of the worst places in the country for delays in hospital discharges of patients who are medically fit to leave, but still need nursing or social care afterwards.

Helen Barker, the hospital Trust’s new Interim Associate Director of Community Service and Operations, said that she is confident that the situation will be better in six months time, although she conceded,

“I’m a bit disappointed at this month’s performance”.

Together with Pippa Corner from Calderdale Council’s Adults Health and Social Care (AHSC) Directorate, Ms Barker attended the Council’s AHSC Scrutiny Panel on 11 August 2015 to explain the delays in discharging patients who need ongoing care once they leave hospital. Continue reading →

Calder Valley NHS Vanguard – fast tracking the 5 year plan to dismantle the NHS

Posted on by
8

The not-so-hidden agenda of the government and its NHS privatisation quango (the NHS Commissioning Board, aka NHS England) is to de-fund, run down and privatise the NHS by the end of this Parliament.

Here is how this is playing out in Calderdale.

De-fund

Cutting £20m/year from Calderdale’s NHS budget until 2019

The Care Closer to Home scheme, which NHS England is imposing in Calderdale and across the country, is dressed up as an improvement to NHS and social care services, but it’s really about making £22bn worth of NHS cuts by 2020.

According to Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group, Calderdale’s share of these cuts amounts to £80m in the four years between 2014/15 and 2018/19, and its Care Closer to Home scheme is key to making these cuts. (Source: Calderdale Care Closer to Home Service Specification, 20 Jan 2015 Version, Draft 13.1, p19) Continue reading →

Expulsions – dead land, dead water

Posted on by
Reply

Just reading Saskia Sassen’s “Expulsions – Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy”.

Expulsions

Her point is that, using highly complex forms of knowledge and technology, predatory global capitalism now systematically operates to drive out people, species and the whole living world from the spaces that sustain life and make it possible. Continue reading →