Archive for September, 2010

Take part in HealthWatch on-line discussion

LINks Exchange is running a weekly on-line discussion about the White Paper proposals to establish HealthWatch.

Equality and Excellence: Liberating the NHS proposes establishing HealthWatch England as the new national consumer champion for health and social and evolving Local Involvement Networks into local HealthWatch organisations.

Each week on LINks Exchange, we will be hosting a discussion about a different aspect of these proposals.

This week the debate is looking at issues of governance and accountability.

Take part in the HealthWatch debate

Bowel Cancer Screening: Your help needed

Over the past 2 years, people across Wandsworth, aged between 60 – 70, have been invited to take part in a national bowel cancer screening programme. Not everyone who has been offered this test has taken up the opportunity to be screened.  We need to find out why, so that we can encourage people in Wandsworth to take up this offer of early screening. Early screening not only saves lives but can prevent people from needing treatment and reduce anxiety.

We need your help! We are running some focus groups in 28^th and 29^th September 2010 to ask people why they chose to take up the screening and, if they chose not to, why not. If you have not participated in a focus group before these are very informal events, where we bring together a small number of people so we can ask them questions and they can share their views on the issues being discussed.

If you have been sent a screening kit, and/or are aged between 60 – 70 years and live in Wandsworth will you take part?  If you are interested in helping out with this please let me know by contacting the Patient and Public involvement team on 020 8812 7577 or emailing us at ppi@wpct.nhs.uk.

• Focus Group 1 (Tuesday 28^th September, 10:30am for 1 hour at Stormont Health Centre, Battersea): This group will be for individuals who have completed the bowel screening kit.
• Focus Group 2 (Wednesday 29^th September, 10:30am for 1 hour at Stormont Health Centre, Battersea): This group will be for individuals who have not completed the bowel screening kit.

Tea, coffee, soft drinks and biscuits will be provided, and travel costs up to £5 will be reimbursed.

If you are unable to attend a focus group but would like to tell us your views on the bowel cancer screening programme, please do not hesitate to contact me and we can send you a questionnaire or have a chat to find out more.
You can also contact the screening programme direct by contacting Dee Lychnos on 020 8812 7526.

Colin Smith

Patient and Public Involvement Manager

NHS Wandsworth

3rd Floor

Wimbledon Bridge House

Hartfield Road

London SW19 3RU

0208 812 7743

07775020253 (PPI Line)

The English Community Care Association (ECCA) is delighted to announce that David Behan, the Department of Health’s Director General of Social Care, has agreed to deliver the keynote speech at this year’s ECCA conference.

This completes the speaker line-up, which also includes Paul Allen, Chief Executive of the Abbeyfield Society, Liz McSheehy, Chief Executive of the National Skills Academy, and Professor Alistair Burns, National Clinical Director for Dementia

Under the title ‘For better or for worse?’, the Conference will take a close look at integrated commissioning – and ask whether health and social care can ever be happily married!  The event will take place on Wednesday, 17 November, at the Holiday Inn, Bloomsbury, London WC1.

Interactive workshops and seminars during the afternoon session will cover a range of business and care-related topics – designed to provide both practical advice and to help Care Services to develop their own strategies for effective care provision in a time of financial restraint.  The Conference will also feature an exhibition of products and services from leading sector suppliers.

ECCA is the largest representative body for community care in 

England. Working on behalf of small, medium and large providers, it  

strives to ensure that care services are commissioned fairly, efficiently and on a properly funded basis – to meet the true costs of providing appropriate care.

BOOK YOUR ECCA =CONFERENCE PLACE NOW

To book a conference place, visit the ECCA website at: http:// www.ecca.org.uk

E-mail: conference@ecca.org.uk.  Or call 08450 577677

The best professional advice given to the Trust has indicated that the maximum sale value for the site will be realised by achieving planning permission for a PCT/ residential development and that is what the project team will be conducting a pre-application consultation on.  The consultation exhibition will take place on Friday 10^th and Saturday 11^th September and a leaflet giving some details and inviting people to the exhibition will be delivered to approximately 10,000 homes around the Bolingbroke site this weekend. Please find a copy of the Bolingbroke Site Consultancy Leaflet here.

The PCT / residential application does not preclude or prejudice other uses for the site, such as a school. The Trust and project team have been proactively engaged with Wandsworth Council (LBW), Partnership for Schools and the Neighbourhood School Campaign over the issue of a secondary school on the site. Although there has been considerable progress made, unfortunately to date, no financial offer has been made to buy the site within the timescale that is vital to the Trust.

The key issues for the Trust in selling the Bolingbroke site are:

1. Timescale (sale completed within the financial year)
2. Maximum value to re-invest in healthcare
3. Provision for the PCT

At a Special Board meeting on Wednesday 1st September, NHS Wandsworth discussed the proposed transfer of Wandsworth Community Services to the management of St George’s NHS Trust.  This transfer is due to take place on 1st October 2010.

Most of the issues relating to the transfer have been resolved but the Board meeting gave some attention to the risks to the Community Services, should the financial position of St George’s worsen.  Until very recently, St George’s failed to balance its books and carried forward an historic deficit.  This has largely been resolved but there is still a risk that the problems may return and the Trust and the position to date in the current financial year is not strong.

There was a recognition of the risks but the board did not see any clear way to minimise these.  A suggestion that procedural approaches such as requiring St George’s Trust to have no greater level of unfilled posts in the community trust division than it does elsewhere in the Trust was not accepted.  The Board gave the go-ahead to further action to be taken in readiness for the final approval to be given at the regular NHS Wandsworth Board meeting on 29th September 2010.