Tonight I visited Bury Hospice at the invitation of the Chief Executive, to view their plans for a new facility, and to meet some staff and take a tour. It was a very informative and enjoyable hour and a half, for which I’m grateful.

The visit started in slightly surreal fashion, I must admit, as I arrived just when two other local PPCs were leaving from earlier appointments. It was clearly some kind of politician’s open day, as Michelle Wiseman the Tory PPC for Bury South, and Maryam Khan the Labour PPC for Bury North were in the lobby leaving as I was going in. I did fear slightly that the coming-together of three opposing political forces in one place unexpectedly would result in some kind of time/space vortex occurring, but thankfully there were no black holes to be seen. It was though the first time Maryam and I had met, which was a shame because I didn’t have chance to even say hello. I’m sure our time will come though. This politics lark is weird like that - candidates come to recognise their opponents names so well and yet sometimes barely ever see each other.

I had never been to the Hospice before, which is not something to be proud of when it’s clear that this is a wonderful and respected facility giving a very high level of care to local people reaching the end of their lives. I am glad I went tonight, and although the tour was only a brief one I did have a long chat with the Chief Exec about the Hospice, its relationship with the NHS, its funding challenges and the need for donations to keep it going. As someone professionally involved with the NHS and voluntarily involved in a charity myself, I know how hard it is to deal with those two things, so doing so in unison and on a massive scale as the Hospice does is extremely tough. The people involve deserve our thanks and respect for the service they provide.

Rick 

A government survey was published today, which revealed that only one in 20 people take the recommended amount of exercise. I can safely assume that I am, shamefully, not that one in twenty.

Norman Lamb, the Lib Dem Shadow Health Secretary, said:

“This data shows there is a ticking time bomb with potentially disastrous consequences both for individuals and for the NHS.

“Lack of exercise leads to increased risk from diabetes, heart disease, strokes and cancer which means misery for so many families.

“If we fail to redirect resources into preventing ill-health, the NHS will face bankruptcy. It is imperative that we change direction.”

It’s all very important, as I try to convince those colleagues of mine who refuse to take the stairs in our three-floor office block.  But my own problems are brought starkly into focus when I realise that the overriding thought that goes through my head when reading that quote from Mr Lamb is “Ooh, a nice roast lamb would be lovely round about now.”

We all need to do lots more exercise - myself included. We’re all supposed to do 5 lots of 30 minutes per week. I don’t, but I should. I do however, vastly exceed the government’s recommended weekly packets of crisps allowance, and have been known to run to the shops to buy some.

I have a serious new years resolution in the pipeline which sees me start doing the running I stopped doing when I got elected to the Council. Gone are the days when I strode around Prestwich and Whitefield like a gazelle (admittedly a slightly podgy one). In their place are sedentary evenings listening to 12 year old Tory Councillors prattle on about political theory whilst Bury crumbles. Annoyance, sadly, doesn’t burn half as many calories as jogging.

Thankfully I may be aided in my quest to be thin for my wedding (on 7th August 2010…) by the election campaign(s) which are happening between now and then. There will definitely be a local election on the first Thursday in May. The General Election may be on the same day, or it may be before, in which case there’ll be two mammoth loads of leaflets and letters to distribute. All that brisk walking is actually a great form of exercise.

It is one of the fringe benefits of campaigning that we can work off the pounds as we wrack up the votes. People can lose over a stone in a long campaign, and get much fitter whilst they do it. I always think more people should be out at election time supporting the party they believe in. Now there’s another reason - it’ll get us healthier and help stop what will definitely be a big problem for the NHS in years to come.

And, if you help us leaflet, we give you a party at the end of the year! This Sunday it’s the Bury Lib Dems Leafleters thankyou party, where we all gather together and eat mince pies to undo the months of good exercise. I am looking forward to it despite that though, as it gives me the chance to see and say thanks to everyone who’s helped us this year. Next year will be the most important for the Bury Lib Dems in a long, long time, and we appreciate the help of all of our supporters.

Rick

I suspect that the only people who read local political blogs are other local politicians, and I’m no exception to that rule. Occasionally I look at Conservative PPC David Nuttall’s, and it was whilst doing so the other day that I was alerted to the existence of Bury Speakeasy, a very worthy charity helping people with a condition called Aphasia.

My Grandpa suffered from Aphasia towards the end of his life, and when I read about Bury Speakeasy on David’s blog I contacted them to say how good it is that they are providing a service for people with Aphasia today in Bury.

Aphasia is a condition affecting a quarter of a million people in the UK. Many are stroke victims, but it can also affect people who have suffered head trauma, brain tumour or other neurological illness. Aphasia doesn’t affect intellect, but the condition means that those with Aphasia have difficulty communicating and dealing with language. It can manifest itself in a number of ways, and it affected my Grandpa who died in 2006. He had trouble speaking and understanding others speaking to him, and it really affected his quality of life in his final few years.

Not many people know about Aphasia, which is a problem for people who suffer from it. You can find out more from the Bury Speakeasy website or from Speakability. Bury is lucky in having a good Stroke service locally, and the Bury Speakeasy charity is almost unique outside of London. Anyone with Aphasia is welcome there, even without a medical referral, regardless of where they live.

Funding for organisations like Speakeasy is always challenging, particularly in tough economic times. I am glad I’ve found out about the organisation, as this is a condition I am particularly interested in, and it’s good that an organisation like this exists close to home.

Rick

For reasons beyond my comprehension, the world doesn’t stand still when I’m on holiday. In fact, lots of things have gone on in Prestwich whilst I’ve been away.

One of them is that a Planning application has been lodged by Care UK for the siting of a mobile Health Clinic at Tesco for a period of seven years. Yes, that’s right. Someone wants to stick a clinic in Tesco’s car park, so that you can shop for an x-ray as you shop for your spuds.

Details are sketchy at present but presumably it will be one of those mobile testing clinics - where you can get your blood pressure checked out or perhaps have more serious matters checked/tested for problems. I’ve got no problem with these at all, but we have an NHS walk-in centre up the road, and there’s talk of a LIFT centre, which would be an even better local NHS facility. Why are the NHS now looking to pay the private sector to set up shop in a supermarket car park until 2016? We’ve got a credit crunch on, haven’t we?

And I wonder how much Tesco are getting out of this… Perhaps enough for them to re-instate the recycling facility they’ve just had removed from the very same car park?

All a bit worrying…

Rick

NHS hospitals made over £110m in parking charges last year, research by the Liberal Democrats has revealed.

The figures, revealed in a Freedom of Information request, show that visitors were charged £84m in parking fees and NHS staff were charged £28m. As an NHS member of staff myself, frequently paying out lots of money every week to park at various hospital sites, these figures are sadly unsurprising.

The research also revealed that:

·    Three NHS hospitals made over £2m in charges

·    Three NHS hospitals made over £1m

·    Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge made the most out of any hospital with £2.8m in total from parking charges
 
Commenting, Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary, Norman Lamb said:
 
“This is a staggering amount of money for the NHS to be making from car parking charges.
 
“Many hospitals are still not offering real discounts to those with chronic illnesses and are effectively operating a tax on the sick.
 
“No one is denying the need for hospitals to cover their costs but that doesn’t mean they can use hidden charges to help themselves out of financial black holes.
 
“Ministers have ducked this issue for far too long and failed to ensure that Government guidelines are actually being followed.
 
“We now need an urgent review into whether hardworking doctors and nurses and the chronically ill should be paying these charges at all.”

Rick

One interesting thing I learned at Overview and Scrutiny last night was the disturbing fact that Adult Care services have seen a big increase in complaints over the last year.

The Annual Complaints Report was presented to us last night, and it showed that there were 87 complaints received in the past twelve months. This is an increase of over 20% on last year. The number of written complaints has more than doubled.

Of these complaints, a large number relate to Home Care Assessments, where the number of complaints has trebled this year. These numbers are disturbing in themselves, but even more alarming is that this year is the first since the service was taken out of direct Council control, and started to be delivered by agency services.

It is not acceptable for complaints about Council services to be increasing at this rate, especially since the means of making changes to provision are now a lot less clear cut since we don’t directly provide the services. Any decision to outsource services must balance the need for efficiency with the need to maintain or improve quality. This doesn’t seem to have happened here. I fear that the most vulnerable in Bury are suffering now because we’ve outsourced the service to an agency incapable of delivering quality.

There are other types of complaint which have gone up markedly this year too. Complaints about the conduct of social care staff have gone up by 80% (from 5 to 9). Complaints about changes to service provision have increased by 57% (from 7 to 11) and those related to quality of care have increased from 11 to 16 (an increase of 45%).

Not only have complaints gone up loads, but the time taken to answer them has also gone up. Last year, 21% of all complaints were answered within the permitted timescales. This year that figure has shot up to 36%.

I have asked for direct feedback on these figures from the Director of Adult Care services . Hopefully I will get an explanation for these disturbing numbers.

Rick

The attractive sneezing man above can only signify one thing - yes, it’s a Swine Flu update from NHS Bury.

Obviously we’re all worried about Swine Flu. As a Jewish guy I’m doubly worried because as well as the health concerns I am also not sure it’s Kosher. The update below doesn’t turn its attention to that problem, nor do I suggest ringing the new national helpline to find out, but hopefully it will answer any other queries you might have about what’s going on locally with everyone’s favourite new pathogen H1N1.

So, here is the latest information from about the National Pandemic Flu Service, direct from the masked-mouths of NHS Bury:
As you will be aware, important changes have been announced to the way in which the NHS is managing the growing swine flu pandemic in England, this sees the launch of The National Pandemic Flu Service.

The National Pandemic Flu Service is a self-care service that will asses a patient’s symptoms and, if required, provide an authorisation number which can be used to collect antiviral medication from a local collection point. 

The service can be accessed online at https://www.pandemicflu.direct.gov.uk/ and for those who do not have internet access, the same service can be accessed by telephone on 0800 1 513 100 (Minicom 0800 1 513 200).

For England, the online health resources remain as:

• Health information www.nhs.uk
• Public information www.direct.gov.uk
• Business information www.businesslink.gov.uk
• The Swine Flu Information Line (automated) can still be contacted on 0800 1 513 513.

Key messages are:

• If you have flu-like symptoms and are concerned that you may have swine flu:
• Stay at home and check your symptoms at the National Pandemic Flu Service at https://www.pandemicflu.direct.gov.uk/ or Telephone 0800 1 513 100.

You should call your GP directly if:

• You have a serious underlying illness
• You are pregnant
• You have a sick child under one year old
• Your condition suddenly gets much worse
• Your condition is still getting worse after seven days (or five days for a child)

I hope everyone stays well, and if they’re unlucky enough to get Swine Flu, makes a speedy recovery.

Rick

Swine Flu has arrived in Bury, having circled the borough for a while, breaking out in places like Bolton and Tameside. The outbreak seems a lot less deadly than when it first appeared in Mexico, but naturally many people will be worried about a potentially nasty dose of the flu, and it’s bad news that it’s come to town.

My full time job is in the NHS, and I share an office with the people in charge of flu-preparedness. In a piece of ill-timed misfortune that really couldn’t have been made up, they were both on holiday when the outbreak started. That was ironic given that the NHS has spent years and millions getting itself ready for a pandemic but had clearly not bargained on simple things like annual leave getting in the way. Thankfully they returned before we all died, neither holidayed on a South American pig farm, and all was well.

The good news didn’t end there though, because my close proximity to them has re-assured me that there really are some very sophisticated plans in place to help mitigate the impact of any flu outbreak, swine or otherwise.

I know it’s an easy thing to say, but right now there seems little to panic about. The symptoms are no worse than regular flu, the plans are in place to deal with it, and thankfully the mortality rate is very tiny indeed.

Not that you’d be able to find out much about the outbreak if you came to the Bury Council meeting tonight. Unfortunately, the elected representatives of the people of Bury can’t ask the Council’s leadership about the outbreak, the resultant school closure, or the plans to deal with it because of rules imposed by them to limit our rights to scrutinise them.

Questions are only allowed if submitted four working days in advance, or on the night only if they relate to a specific discussion held by the Executive and minuted. Unfortunately, whilst the Council’s Tory leadership are many things, soothsayers they are not, and so they didn’t discuss the Swine Flu outbreak at their last Executive meeting. Since the Swine Flu virus inconsiderately decided to appear in town less than four working days before a Council meeting, that avenue is closed to us as well. And so, despite this being a substantial public health issue which has doubtless irked thousands of local people, the rules on questions imposed by a paranoid and anti-democratic council Leader means we can’t ask about it unless they make a special exception. Another reason, if one were needed, why these silly rules need changing. I plan to test it tonight, if nobody beats me to it, and hopefully the Leader will put good sense before inflexibility and allow questions on this urgent matter.

Thankfully, it looks like Swine Flu isn’t the apocalypse we all feared it might be. But if anything truly awful (or truly great, or really noteworthy in any direction) did actually happen, I hope there would be the flexibility to give quick and good answers to the legitimate questions of elected councillors. There should never be a time when it’s acceptable to hide behind bureaucracy, and I think that’s particularly true now.

I am confident that the plans in place to mitigate the effects of Swine Flu will work, and I thank the local services involved in making them happen. I also send my best wishes to the people so far affected in the Borough.

Rick

This morning I handed in my notice at work, as I have accepted a new job. At the moment I work for Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council as a Senior Performance Improvement Officer, but the time has come for a change and I am leaving local government as a career to work for the NHS. I am joining Pennine Care NHS Trust as their Business Planning Manager.

Pennine Care provide mental health services for most of eastern Greater Manchester, including Bury. I am glad to be staying in the public sector, and now with my professional and Council work I can keep working for both the NHS and local government, which are both areas of huge importance to me and to the country.

The future of our NHS is vitally important, and it will be hugely exciting to be joining it at a time when it is perhaps more than ever at the forefront of political debate. Lord Darzi’s interim report Shaping health care for the next decade has been in the news this week, and already the signs are that its publication may be more to do with political expediency than carefully thought-out policy planning. I hope not, but like many others working in the NHS I am sceptical that this report may turn out to be nothing more than another political stunt ahead of a possible General Election.

Remember that it has only been three months since Gordon Brown launched this review, promising to talk to those on the frontline in the health service. How much can he have listened while engineering all the talk about elections?

The key to providing better services to patients is making the NHS more responsive to local communities, not a plan imposed on the whole country by ministers sitting in Whitehall.

As the weeks and months go by I will learn more about the NHS from the inside. Although I will be sad to leave Oldham, I will remain active in local government through Bury Council (without being restrained by the conflict of interest of being a local government officer in Oldham, which is a bonus), I am already looking forward to December when I can start this new challenge.

Rick