Word is, there is a Pop up protest on Thursday 13 Aug, 1pm outside Shay Stadium, Halifax. Appropriate placard: Is this what NO PUBLIC OPPOSITION LOOKS LIKE?
Calderdale Council has unanimously agreed a motion that calls on their NHS commissioning partner, Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group, to delay the public consultation on proposals that are more than likely to cut Calderdale Royal Hospital acute and emergency services, until there is evidence that taking community services out of the hospital and transferring them to GP hubs reduces acute and emergency hospital admissions.
The Council’s motion sidesteps the fact that the Care Closer to Home scheme (transferring community services from the hospital to GP hubs) is a big change to Calderdale NHS and we need to be consulted on this too – not just on the hospital cuts.
What kind of patient care and NHS staff working conditions will come with Care Closer to Home? We know the community hubs will employ less qualified staff like physician associates and there will be big reliance on voluntary carers, family and friends. Continue reading
Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust (the hospitals Trust) has told staff that it is lodging a formal complaint with Monitor (the NHS competition enforcer) about the Clinical Commissioning Groups’ (CCGs) award of the £238m Kirklees community health services contract to Locala.
The hospitals Trust had also bid for the contract, in partnership with the three Federations representing GPs across Kirklees (PHH, Rowan and CURO), Mid-Yorkshire Hospitals Trust and Forget Me Not Children’s Hospice.
Once Greater Huddersfield and North Kirklees CCGs had publicly announced that Locala had got the contract, Owen Williams, the hospital Trust Chief Executive, emailed staff: Continue reading
Several members of Calderdale 38 Degrees NHS attended the Health and Wellbeing Board meeting at Halifax Town Hall on Thursday 2nd July.
This Board is a statutory body set up by the Health and Social Care Act 2012, with the intention that the local authority should plan strategically to integrate health and social care services. It has little statutory power.
Rosemary Hedges, Secretary of Calderdale 38 Degrees, reports on Councillors’ challenges to the NHS bosses’ cost-cutting plans for Calderdale hospital and community health care services.
But do these challenges have much substance, given the Board’s lack of statutory powers? These lie with the Adults Health and Social Care Scrutiny Panel. Continue reading
Anyone who wants to find out about the sell off of our NHS, and understand how this is going to affect patient care, has their work cut out as the plot thickens around the £238m Huddersfield and North Kirklees contract for Care Closer To Home.
This contract is to take services out of the hospital and integrate them into community health and social care services for chronically ill and frail elderly people, with the aim of cutting acute and A&E hospital admissions and services. This is in order to cut NHS spending. Otherwise a £22bn NHS funding gap is predicted to open up by 2020.
The award of the contract has been at a standstill for a month. Yesterday the Health Service Journal reported that the massive contract has gone to a consortium led by Locala, the community health company that was set up in 2010 with staff and assets transferred from NHS Kirklees Primary Care Trust.
The organisations involved – the Clinical Commissioning Groups and Locala – maintain that the contract is still at a “standstill”.
Despite the confusion, Calderdale and Kirklees Councils’ Joint Health Scrutiny Committee (JHSC), which meets in Huddersfield Town Hall, 10.30 am on Monday 29th June, has no plans to ask Greater Huddersfield Clinical Commissioning Group what’s going on. Which rather gives the lie to their earlier promise that they would closely scrutinise this contract. Continue reading
The Health Service Journal has reported that Greater Huddersfield Clinical Commissioning Group and North Kirklees Clinical Commissioning Group have finally announced that they have awarded the £285m/£238m (various accounts of the value) contract for Care Closer to Home community health services to Locala, the company that took over Kirklees’ NHS community health services in 2010, under New Labour’s Transforming Community Services scheme.
The Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), Locala and the CHFT hospitals trust are still not saying a thing publicly about the contract award, although NK CCG messaged me,
“We are currently continuing to work through the process and will publicise the details when we are able to do so.”
A Kirklees resident is waiting for a reply to his Freedom of Information (FOI) request about the award of a £238m contract for “Care Closer to Home”. This 7 year contract is for community health services that include district nurses, health visitors, speech and language therapy, foot care and physiotherapy. The reply is due on Friday 26th June and Greater Huddersfield Clinical Commissioning Group FOI team says,
“The CCG is mindful of the response deadline and expects to be in a position to respond by no later than 26th June.”
However, a reply doesn’t necessarily include the information that has been requested. So we shall have to wait and see if it does. Continue reading
Dr Matt Walsh, Chief Officer of Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group (CCC), will update the CCG governing Body this afternoon about the latest plans for the “transformation” of Calderdale NHS and social care. The meeting is public and takes place at 2pm, in a Function Room at Shay Stadium, Halifax.
The Calderdale NHS and social care shake up has been carried out somewhat under the radar since last August, when the Calderdale and Greater Huddersfield Clinical Commissioning Groups backed off from their scheduled autumn 2014 public consultation, in the face of a loud and determined public “No” to their proposals.
These proposals included the closure of Calderdale A&E and other acute hospital services at Calderdale Royal Hospital, such as acute children’s services and complex maternity services, and the transfer of many hospital-based services into the “community,” with the aim of cutting acute and emergency hospital admissions. Continue reading
On 28 May representatives of Dewsbury Keep Our NHS Public and North Kirklees NHS Support Group presented a petition from 1,258 local people to Cllr Viv Kendrick, Chair of Kirklees Health and Wellbeing Board, at its monthly meeting.
Comprising 3 scrolls, with a combined length of over 18m, the petition called on the Health and Wellbeing Board to:
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
