A Hebden Bridge patient with serious long term ailments is being prevented from accessing NHS treatments for which they have a clinical need.
If you support her wish to get to the bottom of this matter, please sign this open letter, by Friday 30th March. Upper Calder Valley Plain Speaker will then deliver, it with all signatures, to the Hebden Bridge Group Practice Manager. Continue reading
Just a reminder, in case one is needed, about how the government, its quango Monitor (now renamed NHS Improvement) and the management consultancy company EY have worked hand in glove to put PFI investors’ interests above the healthcare needs of the people of Calderdale and Huddersfield.
Here’s how the story has unfolded over the last 4 years.
In 2014, Calderdale and Huddersfield hospitals Trust’s finances fell into “deficit”, as a result of impossible underfunding combined with a £20m+ transfer over 2 years of Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust funding to Calderdale Council to prop up its cash-starved adult social care services, via the Better Care Fund.
‘hospital emergency activity will have to reduce by 15%’
This is what happened next.
Continue readingCalderdale Council Cabinet has resolved that the Council will take more steps towards setting up an Accountable Care System to run local NHS and social care services.
Dubbed a “place based integrated health and care system”, it is due to be set up in shadow form in April and to go live in June 2019, according to a paper prepared for the 12.2.18 Cabinet meeting.
As the Cabinet resolved this issue in the meeting, Full Council will not debate or vote on it at its Meeting on 11th April.
Papers prepared for the Cabinet seem to have been written, in gobbledygook, by a student of Humpty Dumpty:
Continue readingLike other Calderdale parents of disabled children, Katherine Horner has recently received a letter inviting her to a consultation at the Shay Stadium in Halifax on Wednesday the 29th November, about Calderdale Council’s proposed cuts and changes to Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCP) provision and Disabled Children’s Access To Care (DCATCH) funding for children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilty (SEND).
Calderdale Council says it has to make cuts because of government changes to Early Education Funding requirements. Continue reading
It’s Living Wage Week (5 – 11 November 2017) and the Living Wage Foundation has announced a new UK living wage of £8.75 per hour, an increase of 30p per hour. There are around 20 accredited Living Wage employers in Calderdale, so this is good news for all their employees.
Calderdale Council, as an accredited Living Wage employer, says it welcomes the increase in UK and London rates. Continue reading
Father Christmas is coming to the annual Christmas fair in Heptonstall for the first time ever! This is on Saturday 25th November, 11.30am-3pm. We hope he pays the elves the living wage!
He has been invited by the new friends of the chapel group, so if you have any children or grandchildren who would like to meet him, that’s the place to be. Continue reading
Calderdale Council’s Cabinet yesterday agreed to consult street sweeping staff and trade unions about introducing a 7 day working week which would remove overtime pay for weekend work. Continue reading
On 27th October, Frack Free Calderdale folk gathered in St George’s Square, Hebden Bridge, to tell Yorkshire Water that fracking waste water is dangerous, and they are unhappy with the prospect of fracking waste water being treated at Yorkshire Water’s Knostrop Waste Water Treatment Works in Leeds.
Social prescribing is part of a process of destroying jobs and the local economy, although you would never have guessed this at the Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group Governing Body meeting on Thursday 10th August.
The meeting started as usual with a “patient story” that allows the Clinical Commissioning Group to reassure themselves that they have a reason to get out of bed in the morning (a phrase that Clinical Commissioning Group officials used more than once in discussing this patient story).
This time the patient story was a video of patient testimonies to the Staying Well social prescribing scheme to tackle loneliness, which was rolled out in the Upper Calder Valley a few years ago. Continue reading
On October 12th Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group Governing Body will meet at Shay Stadium in Halifax, to consider the recommendation that they tell the NHS England quango that they support Calderdale and Huddersfield hospital trust’s Full Business Case.
The recommendations in a paper to the Governing Body say that the Full Business Case is in line with the clinical model that was consulted on; is affordable; and provides a sustainable plan not only for the Trust but the wider Calderdale and Greater Huddersfield System of care.
NHS protectors challenge this perception. They point out that Calderdale and Kirklees Councillors’ Joint Health Scrutiny Committee have referred the hospital cuts and changes plans to the Secretary of State for Health as unfit for the people of both areas, unfit for the local NHS and lacking in the consultation department. Continue reading