Ben Bradshaw claims NHS shake-up will hit waiting times
Taken from This Is Exeter click here for full article
MINISTERS have been tackled by Exeter MP Ben Bradshaw over the impact of a major NHS shake-up on waiting times.
The former Labour Health Minister claimed in the Commons that the times patients were having to wait for treatment had gone up under the coalition government.
The performance of accident and emergency departments had also got worse with the “watering down” of targets.
But this was rejected by ministers who described Mr Bradshaw’s comments as a “cheap” attack.
It follows criticism of the way the Government has handled a far-reaching overhaul of the health service, which has led to concerns about its impact on care.
Responding to a question by Mr Bradshaw over the impact of the reorganisation on waiting times, Health Minister Simon Burns said: “The proposed changes will focus the NHS on quality.
“It will also focus on the results that matter to patients, such as how successful their treatment was and not just on bureaucratic processes such as waiting-time targets.
“Waiting times are important to patients, along with the quality of their experience and outcomes, and this is what will drive improvements in the future.”
But Mr Bradshaw said: “Well, what a revelation. I think that the Minister will find that the public do care about waiting times.
“Will he confirm that waiting times are already going up, that more people are already waiting more than 18 weeks – the maximum that we achieved when we were in government – and that the performance of accident and emergency departments has deteriorated since he watered down our A & E targets?” Mr Burns hit back saying: “I think that he either did not hear my earlier remarks or had penned his question prior to hearing them.
“What I said was that waiting times are important to patients.
“May I also explain to him that the average median time for the latest month available – November – shows patients completing a referral-to-treatment pathway in about 8.3 weeks.
“His comments on A & E are just factually wrong and somewhat cheap.”
The youngest person to die in youth custody
Youth custody death boy was ‘disturbed’ by treatment.
The youngest person to die in youth custody could have killed himself because he was physically restrained and hit on the nose, an inquest heard.
Read more here
Kendal is worst town in UK for disabled people’ – claim
Kendal has been branded ‘the most unfriendly place’ in the country for disabled people.
Disability groups say decisions taken by South Lakeland District Council amount to ‘discrimination’ against both residents and visitors with mobility problems
YOUR VOTE
£1.5bn Worth Of Court Fines Uncollected
Ruth Barnett, Sky News Online
The Ministry of Justice must improve its financial management after £1.5bn worth of unpaid court fines had still not been collected after six months, MPs have said.
Committee chair Margaret Hodge said improvement was “badly needed”, as the amount of uncollected fines grows every year.
The committee, which acts as a spending watchdog, also feared the MoJ would not understand the impact the 23% reduction in its budget over the next four years will have on frontline services.
It must ensure “a cut in one area does not lead to additional expenditure elsewhere”, the report warned.
There is a danger it will make “ill-informed cuts” to services if it reduces its budget without a better understanding value for money, it added.
Just 30% of the fines and penalties owed for more than half a year by March 2010 were considered recoverable, a report by the Public Accounts Committee found.
“If the Ministry of Justice is to minimise the impact on its frontline services of its tough spending settlement, it must fully understand the cost and value of those services,” Mrs Hodge, a Labour MP, said.
“But the ministry and its arm’s length bodies currently lack that detailed information.
“It is simply not acceptable that, after two years’ work, the ministry still does not fully understand the cost of its staff activities in its largest executive agency.”
A spokesman for the department said the report’s findings would be studied in depth and they would formally respond to Parliament about the recommendations it makes.
“The Ministry of Justice notes the criticisms in the PAC report, which is based on data from 2008 and 2009,” he said.
“Since then, as the report states, significant progress has been made in the way that the department manages its finances,” he added
Job cuts latest: 15,000 more council posts face the axe
Local authorities are continuing to issue formal notifications of “jobs at risk”, pushing the current total of posts under threat to over 140,000
- Patrick Butler
- guardian.co.uk, Monday 24 January 2011 19.06 GMT
- Article history
Today’s update from the GMB union’s council “jobs at risk” monitorshows a familiar upward trend. The total number of local authority and police and fire authority posts formally declared to be be under threat in the UK is now 140,456 – up from 125,000 a week ago and 100,000 at the beginning of the month.
There is much more of this to come – this figure is taken from HR1 forms issued by 203 councils and authorities, with another 294 yet to report. The biggest planned cuts notified over the past few days come from Nottinghamshire county council (2,500 jobs at risk); Fife council (1,800); Worcestershire county council (1,500); Croydon borough council (1,500); Leicester City council (1,000) and Hackney borough council (800).
Broken down by region, council job losses now look like this:
North East total 9,164
North West total 25,945
Yorkshire & The Humber total 16,846
East Midlands total 10,304
West Midlands total 20,746
Eastern total 9,473
London total 13,829
South East total 12,530
South West total 10,808
Wales total 1,170
Scotland total 9,641
National total 140,456
The GMB points out that some of the individual figures are incomplete: Liverpool city council’s notification of 300 job losses does not include all council departments – and so could end up being much higher. For a discussion of how far we should interpret the figures as an accurate predictor of eventual job losses, see my earlier blog post.
The GMB’s cuts totaliser does not include the NHS and other agencies and government departments, or charities and private companies which are dependent on public spending.
Today Unison published a “cuts dossier”, which while much less rigorous than the GMB monitor, gives a useful snapshot of where else the cuts have fallen over the past six weeks. They include widespread cuts to Connexions youth advice agencies and job losses in some NHS trusts as savings targets start to kick in, the most notable being the Heart of England NHS trust in Birmingham, where 1,600 jobs are to go.
One Voice Disability Services
One Voice Lancaster
One Voice Disability Services is moving
One Voice is relocating in February 2011
What will happen?
- Friday 28th January One Voice will cease it full services at The Cornerstone.
- From Monday 31st January we will be operating a skeletal service (mainly answering phones) and moving into our new premises.
- From Monday 7th February we will resume services from our new office.
Our new contact details are:
Address:
Room B22 Tel: Information 01524 34411
Ground Floor Tel: General 01524 382764
St Leonards House Email: onevoice@btconnect.com
St Leonards Gate
Lancaster LA1 1NN
If you would like any further information please contact joanne.onevoice@btconnect.com
Papers Deposited to Parliament
Keep up to date with all the documents that have or are being put through Parliament some of you may not understand what these are, well these papers can be the shape of our future.
Click here to access them and see what going on, we all need to keep up to date because things are happening so fast and if you blink you will have missed it.
Good Luck out there.
The Big Society
You may have heard this many times since the new Con-Dem coalition government came into power back in May 2010.
I have heard it that many times I have lost count, I have attended meetings regarding this in the area where I live.
So what you doing towards the Big Society ?
You can find more information here
Taken from the site
The Big Society is a society in which individual citizens feel big: big in terms of being supported and enabled; having real and regular influence; being capable of creating change in their neighbourhood. Does our society pass this test at the moment?
Well, only 4 out of 10 of us believe that we can influence local decisions. Only 1 in 33 of us attend public meetings. We feel anger and frustration at the recent behaviour of both the City and Westminster and relatively powerless to change them. We are often anonymous tax-payers without a real sense of how our money gets spent. Most of us try to be reasonably good citizens but our influence seems very small.
The Big Society is a powerful vision to change this, creating a nation of empowered citizens and communities. It has been articulated by Prime Minister David Cameron, but is linked to some of the best ideas across the political spectrum.
People have interpreted the ideas and vision in different ways, but we see the core of the big society as three principles:
- Empowering individuals and communities: Decentralising and redistributing power not just from Whitehall to local government, but also directly to communities, neighbourhoods and individuals
- Encouraging social responsibility: Encouraging organisations and individuals to get involved in social action, whether small neighbourly activities like hosting a Big Lunch to large collective actions like saving the local post office
- Creating an enabling and accountable state: Transforming government action from top-down micromanagement and one-size-fits-all solutions to a flexible approach defined by transparency, payment by results, and support for social enterprise and cooperatives
Disability Access Guide
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The Disability Access guide is for the use of anyone in Lancaster and Morecambe who requires good access to services, whether it be because of low mobility or a disability. We hope that the guide will be of use to both visitors and residents alike who require good information and access for the services they want to use.
and if you have mobile phone then click here for mobile address
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Contact the guide click here
FREEDOM AND CHOICE ON THE SITE
One Voice is committed to encouraging local business and services in the provision of good access for all. This is to enable disabled people to freely use the services without encountering physical or information barriers.
The information in this guide has been compiled by disabled people with good local knowledge and is up to date at the present time. We will continue to update information on a regular basis.
We very much welcome your comments, suggestions and any additional information you think would be useful. If you have a business or service that you wish to be included in the Guide, please contact us via the Contact Us page.
Individual access requirements vary a great deal. We suggest that this information is used in conjunction with local tourist information and any other information which may be produced by individual service providers.
HANDY TIPS
The Guide has been compiled by members of One Voice. Throughout the Guide we have added our own handy tips. We hope that they will prove helpful!
- If you have any particular access requirements, we suggest that you contact the service prior to your visit.
- It may be easier to use a business or service outside peak hours.
COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease)
COPD is a lung condition, that my mum had and died of, I now have this killer and I don’t smoke, many people are not aware that they have this horrid illness.
Some days I am fine can carry on with day to day stuff, and then other days I am breathless and feel like tight chested, unable to carry out day to day and I am only 38.
I am unsure of the years ahead and as my mum passed away when she was 59, so that’s 20 years on my time, but with all the added medical issues I have I wonder??
To find out more about this COPD click here