Archive for June, 2011

LINk’s future evolution into HealthWatch has been surrounded by questions. Who will be responsible for commissioning HealthWatch? Will there still be a host? Will HealthWatch have to provide complaints and advocacy as well? and When will HealthWatch be officially launched?

In the first bulletin from the HealthWatch advisory group which contains up to date, authoritative information on HealthWatch developments, some of these questions have been answered.

The Government response to the NHS Future Forum listening exercise was published on 20 June. Click here to view the document. A key headline from the document is that HealthWatch England and Local HealthWatch organisations will now be launched in October 2012.

To strengthen the collective voice of patients and carers in the system at both a local and national level, Local Involvement Networks (LINks) will evolve to become Local HealthWatch, and HealthWatch England will be set up as the independent consumer champion within the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

 LINks will remain until legislation changes. LINks’ funding, provided by the Department of Health to local authorities, remains at the same level as under the area based grant. The Department of Health’s funding has not been reduced but neither is it ‘ring-fenced’. According to the department of Health LINks should expect to be fully funded for the work they do. Further, as the Bill intends for Local HealthWatch organisations to be ‘bodies corporate’ with the power to hire their own staff should they wish to do so, local authorities should work with LINks and other partners to fully explore the options for moving from LINks to local HealthWatch. Some options and advice are set out in the HealthWatch Transition Plan published on 30 March 2011.

•  Local authorities will be responsible for establishing and funding Local HealthWatch organisations;

•  Local authorities will commission a Local HealthWatch organisation;

•  Local HealthWatch organisations will, as bodies corporate, be responsible for arranging their own support services;

• Local authorities will be responsible for ensuring accountability and value for money (of Local HealthWatch organisations).

WILF seeks to be the voice of disabled people in Wandsworth, promoting awareness, independence, choice, empowerment, and mutual support. Wednesday 8th June saw its 1st Annual General Meeting and formal launch at the York Gardens Library. The meeting was open to anyone with an interest in disability issues in Wandsworth

Keynote Speakers were Sue Bott, Chief Executive of the National Centre for Independent Living, and John Evans OBE, former User Led Organisation Adviser at the Department of Health, and currently UK and European Disability Consultant

The meeting was well attended. Included in the 50 or so attendees was Jim Cowan, Policy and Performance Officer for Adult Social Services at Wandsworth Borough Council. Here he shares his thoughts with us on the meeting, its inputs, objectives and outputs

“The meeting was well organised but also sufficiently informal for people to feel relaxed. The WILF constitution is a very short well thought out document and the meeting was used to inspire and draw people in rather than inflict too many turgid formalities. A Committee was voted in and Officers will be elected at the first formal Trustee meeting. The AGM was also used to promote membership among disabled people, their carers, and organisational representatives.

They had two great speakers. The first is living history and several months ago was a speaker at one of Ray Jones evening sessions at Kingston. It was John Evans one of the founding and still one of the leading disability movement figures in Britain. He explained what he had been involved with in the 70s and 80s and how getting direct payments to live independently of a care home at that time was really something …he then showed how pressure from the disability movement had step by step, decade by decade led to CILs and self directed support/personal budgets. Everyone really listened very intently to his story and gave him a tremendous round of applause

Equally inspiring was Sue Bott, director of the National Centre for Independent Living. She offered great praise to the movement, providing a sense of self confidence about what they are doing and quoting examples of other CILs…showing that what they are doing in Wandsworth by starting small is absolutely spot on.

John and Sue used the meeting to announce a £3m project to put small sums into ULOs. This will be launched early in July. It will be suitable for organisations like WILF for putting in for some money for some development work. It is to help organisations get established by funding small pieces of work, for example hiring in a fundraiser for a few months. It’s a little bit of money, a drop in the ocean. There will be a very simple form which can be used anytime and a panel will meet every 8 weeks. No doubt WILF will be in the front of this particular queue and hopefully the fact that people at the meeting really supported the launch will prove to be a significant factor.

There was then a question and answer session. I got asked (as a representative of the dept) to answer a question on whether a personal budget could be a direct payment…it was nice to be able to give a monosyllabic and simple answer, which caused some humour – YES!!! I explained about the experience of direct payments through the previous decade, how they were different from personal budgets and how now it’s a way of taking control of the money rather than leaving it in the hands of the Council, acknowledging that many people really prefer to do the latter.

It felt like a family gathering, very relaxed with people getting the time they needed to speak and being listened to…it was all good stuff…nobody trying to argue against anything or question things too intensely…and at the same time a recognition of how rare such a gathering was and how these kinds of spaces which empower people with disabilities were more needed now than ever before….a sense of a community now under siege with attempts to withdraw many of its benefits…a sense of needing to have such an organisation now more than at any other time.”

Thank you to Jim Cowan for providing this summary on what sounded like a very positive meeting for all involved

Earlier in the year, NHS Wandsworth published a Primary Care Performance Scorecard for GP services in the borough.  It is based on data for 2009/10 and gives a comprehensive picture across a range of indicators.  It can be found at http://www.wandsworth.nhs.uk/gettherighttreatment/Doctors/Pages/GPScorecard.aspx.

The full table of data can also be downloaded from the NHS Wandsworth website.  The Adult Care and Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee of the Council considered the performance information at its June meeting, publishing a simplified version of the data and commenting on the wide variation in performance among GPs across the borough.  Across six key indicators of GP performance, there are a number of GPs which are in the bottom quartile for several aspects of performance whilst others are consistently in the top quartile.  The Council report on the subject can be downloaded at http://ww3.wandsworth.gov.uk/moderngov/mgConvert2PDF.aspx?ID=14094.

NHS Choices is also now publishing better information on GP and other health services and, for Wandsworth, this can be found at  http://www.nhs.uk/Services/Trusts/Overview/DefaultView.aspx?id=3526.  If you are choosing a GP in Wandsworth or know somebody else who is then this information may be vital to making a good decision. 

Contents include …

1. Minutes

2. Feedback from the Executive Board

3. Presentation

4. Voluntary organisation case studies.

5. Small group work

6. Closing plenary

7. Report on progress of Health and Wellbeing Executive Board

Meeting Notes (Word Attachment)

report by Roger Appleton

A report to the Council’s Adult Care and Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee in June informed Councillors that the contracts for providers of community support services to adults with learning disabilities are being re-tendered.  These contracts include support services such as help for learning disabled adults with shopping and in taking part in activities or attending appointments together with the travel buddying scheme which trains and support learning disabled adults to travel independently.

Selected service providers will offer rates for providing a range of services which learning disabled adults can purchase using their personal budgets.  Currently, the providers of the travel support schemes have recruited and trained more than 25 adults with mild learning disabilities to act as buddies and this has proved an exciting local development.  Experience of employing learning disabled adults is included as a requirement of the new contract and, under questioning from the LINk representative, the Council gave a clear commitment to ensuring that the providers of services under the new contracts continued with the practice of offering employment to learning disabled adults in these travel support roles.

report by Roger Appleton

The financial challenges facing St George’s Hospital were set out clearly in a report considered by the Council’s Adult Care and health Overview and Scrutiny Committee recently.  Although the trust achieved financial balance in 2010/11, it did not achieve its savings target and this failure has contributed to its decisions to delay its application for Foundation trust status.  In the current year, the trust faces a double problem of anticipated reduced demand for its services amounting to some £15 million pounds in income, alongside the challenge of achieving its own savings target of a further £38 million.

Under questioning from the LINk representative, the Trust confirmed that it had faced some self-inflicted problems during the past year with reduced clinical activity because of Consultant unavailability but promised that this problem would not recur during the current year.

Much of the anticipated reduced demand in the current year relates to treatment for non-Wandsworth patients but the Trust still could face a problem of having to re-expand its services in an unplanned way during the year if the planned demand reductions do not take place and more patients are admitted than were expected.

As well as these financial challenges, it appears that the pressure on the A&E services at St George’s remain and it is not clear that the alternative walk-in arrangements put in place by NHS Wandsworth have had a significant impact of attendances at A&E.  The LINk will take this up with NHS Wandsworth at its next meeting.

Comments from Wandsworth LINk on St. Georges’ Health Care Quality Accounts

Guardian News article

Two leading baby charities have joined forces to create a new specialist at St George’s Hospital who will care for families of premature and sick babies.

Charities First Touch and Bliss are working with St George’s Healthcare NHS Trust and the South West London Perinatal Network to fund the first ever family-centred care coordinator post for an initial term of three years.

The coordinator will be based in the neonatal unit of St George’s and will work with the 600 families whose baby is admitted to neonatal care each year, providing information and support.

The full-time post will be shared between Bobbie Everson and Lyndsey Hookway who will both be working by the end of June.

Ms Hookway said: “I am delighted to be working in conjunction with Bliss, First Touch, and St George’s in this exciting new role. I hope that this role will become a common feature of many neonatal units, as new training, evidence and policy is generated for the benefit of our smallest patients and their families.”

Today we launched a new Fan Page for Wandsworth LINk on Facebook. To become a fan please select the link below and then choose the ‘Like’ option at the top of the page.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Wandsworth-LINk-NEW/132074480204295

This will now become our main Facebook page where you will be kept up to date on all the latest news, which of course will always be posted here at www.wandsworthlink.org.uk

Don’t forget you can also follow us on twitter @WandsworthLINk (http://twitter.com/#!/WandsworthLINk)

Over the coming weeks we will be attempting to increase our visibility on social media platforms. If you have any suggestions or questions please contact Ken (office@wandcareall.org.uk) or Sarah (sarah@wandcareall.org.uk) at the LINk office