If you’re a Calder Valley citizen and want to keep the Human Rights Act (HRA), please tell our MP Craig Whittaker to join with pro- Human Rights Tory MPs and argue and vote against the government’s attempt to repeal the HRA.
Here is a template for an letter/email to send him – obviously change it as you see fit.
You can copy and paste it into this email form and then send it to our MP. Continue reading
Calderdale parents, teachers and trades unions are calling for the government to scrap its new proposal to test infants on a narrow checklist of basic skills and knowledge, within the first six weeks of starting school.
They have set up a group called Calderdale 2 Young 2 Fail, in order to campaign against these so-called Baseline Assessments. Continue reading
The Secretary of Calderdale NHS 38 Degrees campaign group has slammed a statement by Calderdale and Huddersfield hospitals trust’s Chief Executive and other hospital bosses across England, that they’ll accept the government’s proposed £22bn efficiency cuts in exchange for the Prime Minister’s backing for rapid hospital cuts and closures, and funding for “new models of care”.
Among these new models of care are Calderdale’s “Care Closer to Home” scheme, which aims to cut acute and emergency hospital services by taking services for frail elderly and chronically ill patients out of Calderdale Royal Hospital and putting them into the “community”.
Owen Williams, Chief Exec of Calderdale & Huddersfield hospitals Trust, recently co-signed an NHS Confederation letter to the Prime Minister where NHS bosses accepted the government’s £22bn “efficiency” cuts programme for the NHS, while calling on the new Conservative government to honour its manifesto promise of an £8bn extra funding/year to carry out the big changes identified in NHS England’s 5 Year Forward View, plus funding for “transformation” and social care. Continue reading
Staff from Monitor (the NHS competition enforcer) were at the Calderdale and Kirklees Joint Health Scrutiny Committee (JHSC) meeting on 25 March to explain what Monitor is doing about our Hospitals Trust deficit.
In 2015/16 and 2016/17 the short term plan comes down to making cuts (aka “efficiency savings”), as recommended by Price Waterhouse Cooper accountancy company, and also using all the Trust’s cash reserves to pay off the deficit. CHFT will present this short term plan in May 2015.
In a Groundhog Day moment, the JHSC heard that CHFT’s longer term strategic financial plan for a cost-saving “reconfiguration” of the hospitals is likely to include proposals for putting all acute and emergency services on one site. And there will also be a review of the whole “local health economy”, to be carried out by all the area’s NHS organisations and both Local Authorities. Continue reading
Calderdale Council Adults Health and Social Care Scrutiny Panel will today (31 March 2015) scrutinise a proposal to set up a pilot that will test the outsourcing/privatisation of Community Social Work.
The cost-cutting aim is to turn the Council’s Support at Home social work service into a Public Service Mutual (PSM), along the lines of the “People to People” scheme in Shropshire – saving Calderdale Council £2.5m in 2017/18.
The Calderdale Community Social Work PSM would be set up in a form to allow ‘commercial’ or ‘investment’ funding; it would be profit-making and would allow staff to take 35% of the yearly profits. Continue reading
Roger Munday will talk about Science and religious belief – conflict or common ground?
Only a few months into the privatised wheelchair services contract, patients (and their parents, in the case of children who use wheelchairs) are complaining at their treatment by Opcare Ltd – the company that the Clinical Commissioning Groups awarded the contract to in 2014.
Cllr Megan Swift is investigating complaints by parents of children with disabilities.
Fern Bast, a Hebden Bridge resident with very restricted mobility and in constant pain as a result of spinal degeneration, has complained at the treatment she’s received from Opcare at their outreach clinic site in Halifax. Continue reading
LibDem Councillors last night voted with the Tory group to approve a 3 year Council budget that passes huge Coalition government cuts to local authority funding onto the people of Calderdale.
The new Council Budget is vague about massive cuts it commits to in 2017/18, which include £2.6m cuts to unspecified “discretionary services”, as well as £2.5m cuts to Adults Health and Social Care and Children’s and Young People’s Services, as a result of “new ways of working”.
“New ways of working” is about turfing staff out of Council employment and getting them to set up as a social enterprise, contracted to deliver Council services on less money.
Discretionary services are those which the Council doesn’t have a statutory duty to provide, but which the public relies on in our day to day lives – such as libraries, winter road gritting and children’s centres. Continue reading
Calderdale Council’s Budget Proposals 2015/16 – 2017/18 include swingeing cuts to local services, in order to “balance the budget” in the face of massive and unprecedented cuts by central government to the local government support grant.
Labour has put forward an alternative budget that includes the use of prudential borrowing and Council reserves to invest in income-generating public services, like affordable housing and business support – but it still proposes making major cuts as laid out in the Tory/LibDem Budget.
Both the Labour and the Tory/LibDem budgets include big cuts to Adults Health and Social Care (AHSC) services.
£2.5m is the target for cuts in 2017/18 to be achieved through cutting Council social workers loose from the Council and setting them up as a “mutual” business. Both the LibDem/Tory budget and the Labour budget include this measure. Continue reading