NHS feature
Fight the cuts in community services
HUNDREDS OF health visitors, district nurses and school nurses
lobbied the health scrutiny committee of Waltham Forest Council in east
London on 12 July.
The Primary Care Trust (PCT) is looking to cut £14 million which
would decimate community services. At the same time, the local Whipps
Cross hospital is threatening to axe 400 jobs, close four wards and two
operating theatres.
A health visitor on the lobby spoke to Christine Thomas about what
these cuts will mean.
"THERE IS a proposal going to the health and overview scrutiny
committee from the PCT to cut 42%-45% of health visitor and school
nursing posts. The PCT has said that this means no change in the
service.
In fact it’s been described as enhanced service delivery! But we’re
very concerned about the poor level of service that there will be.
We visit mothers and babies, we do child health surveillance, we look
after women with postnatal depression and we work in child protection.
The school nurses are involved with the health of school children, they
do health screening, they do all the public health immunisation of
school children.
The proposal is to cut our jobs and substitute us with assistant
practitioners – people who will have done training for about a month.
School nurses and health visitors are multi-trained. We’re all
registered nurses, then we’ve done a year’s training to work in the
community and then usually we’ve got other skills as well.
For example, I’ve trained as a paediatric nurse. We are all
multi-skilled really and this is a deskilling of the service.
We’re particularly worried about child protection. What’s being
proposed goes against all the recommendations of Lord Laming’s report
after the Victoria Climbie inquiry. Because we are a universal service
we visit everybody so we are likely to pick up if there are things that
are going wrong in families.
And families don’t feel threatened by us visiting because we see
everybody. So it’s not the same as social services coming in and
targeting people. The trust says that families who are having
difficulties can be targeted but if you don’t visit everybody how do you
know who they are?
Our service is stretched already. There is a lot of goodwill and a
lot of people work extra unpaid hours anyway. If the service is halved
it won’t be enhanced but completely decimated and we think that is
beyond safe practice. It goes against all the so-called government
targets.
Patricia Hewitt’s been saying we are going to keep people out of
hospital and we are going to care for them in primary care. But this
document also proposes 22% of cuts in district nursing. So there’s going
to be less district nurses for the elderly and people coming out of
hospital.
We’re very angry that this hasn’t been taken to public consultation.
We have asked ‘when are you going to tell the public?’ but the chief
executive said it doesn’t warrant a public consultation because it’s not
a significant change in service."
Ancillary workers ballot for strike
UNISON MEMBERS working as ancillary staff at Whipps Cross hospital in
east London are balloting for strike action. The workers, employed by
Initial, are balloting for action because the company have failed to
honour an agreement made in 2003. Then, the Initial workers fought for
and won a deal to give them the same benefits as NHS staff, under the
pay and job evaluation scheme Agenda for Change.
Instead of honouring this deal, which still fixes the minimum rate at
only £6.02 per hour, Initial are cutting hours and jobs. The union is
demanding immediate implementation of the deal, with back pay from 1
April 2006.
Waltham Forest
Save our NHS march
WALTHAM FOREST Save Our NHS Campaign has organised a demonstration
against these savage cuts at Whipps Cross and in the community.
We say:
-
No to NHS jobs cuts and closures.
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No to health privatisation and the ‘market’.
-
Rebuild the NHS as a publicly funded service, free at the point
of use, with immediate cash to end this underfunding crisis.
Join the demo. Saturday 1 July. Assemble 11am, Whipps Cross hospital
main gate, Whipps Cross Road, Walthamstow.
Leicester
Show Hewitt that we’re angry
AT THE UNISON branch meeting of Leicestershire health branch, we
discussed how to build the campaign against NHS cuts. The four PCTs in
Leicester are seeking to make cuts of £62 milllion, yet board managers
have been trying to persuade the public that patient health care won’t
be affected.
Andrew Walton, UNISON shop steward, (personal capacity)
Apparently the problem is that NHS staff have cut waiting times by
treating too many people! Isn’t that their job?
NHS funding is not going to better patient care, but into the pockets
of big business. We need to fight to keep the NHS in public hands, so
treatment is not determined by your medical insurance or your bank
balance, but is available to everyone, free at the point of need.
The UNISON branch meeting decided to hold a public meeting (7pm
Wednesday 28 June, Oddfellows Club, Humberstone Gate, Leicester) to
build support for a demonstration on 8 July, 10am, assembling in
Humberstone Gate.
The demonstration would go past Patricia Hewitt’s surgery, so that
the people of Leicester can tell her what they think of her policies.
There would also be an indicative ballot for industrial action by health
workers.
With pressure from below, we can force unions to become more active
in fighting cuts and privatisation. Massive mobilisation is still
required for a huge national demo in London to hammer home public anger
against the demolition of our health service.
Stop this creeping NHS privatisation
THE GOVERNMENT is speeding up the rate of privatisation in the NHS. A
High Court judgement recently ruled that United Health Group, the
biggest private healthcare company in the US and one of the biggest in
the world, could take over two GP practices in Derbyshire.
The judges decided that the people living in the village of Langwith
had not been properly consulted but that it would probably have been
accepted even if there had been a consultation!
As an article in the socialist 440 pointed out, United Health has no
local staff, no local knowledge, no local support and no experience of
primary care in Britain, especially in areas with widespread poverty and
chronic ill-health. The $16 billion corporation is more interested in
getting its feet under the table before bidding for control of the
budgets of Primary Care Trusts (PCTs), that pay for hospital treatments.
The Department of Health desperately wants the private sector to take
on the PCTs’ work. After starting putting some NHS operations,
diagnostics, mental health facilities etc. out to the profit-fixated
private sector, the PCTs’ work is now also up for grabs. Private firms,
not NHS staff, could be deciding which services – hospitals, GP services
etc, – provide the ‘best value for money’.
Who would be interested in this? United Health would like to be able
to direct PCTs’ spending to private treatment centres they own rather
than to the NHS. Health insurers like Norwich Union will also be hoping
that the government quotes them happy.
Creeping privatisation is ruining the NHS and leaving control in the
hands of private companies that, when it comes to the crunch, would put
profit before health. It’s time for the unions to start fighting back in
earnest, starting with a national demonstration against NHS cuts,
closures and privatisation.
West Midlands march to defend the NHS
Saturday 15 July
Assemble 11am at City Hospital, Dudley Road, Birmingham.
March to rally in Centenary Square at 1pm.
Posters and leaflets can be downloaded from the following websites:
nhssos.org.uk or stokesocialistparty.org.uk
Bosses breakfast with Blair
WHEN TONY Blair wanted advice on running hospitals and other
"21st century public services", did he ask doctors, nurses,
ambulance drivers, NHS ancillary workers or support staff? No. He
consulted business figures.
Blair wants an even closer relationship with the private sector. So
captains of industry (what’s left of it) were invited to a breakfast
seminar with Blair on foundation hospitals.
Over the Cornflakes (or whatever fat cats breakfast on), Richard
Lapthorne, chairman of Cable and Wireless (C&W) told Blair to go
further than sacking the 15,000 NHS workers who the unions estimate are
already at risk.
He advised Blair to get rid of anyone on a trust board
"sympathetic to the whingers among the staff who never want to
change" and then fire "one-third of the managers who were
probably opposed to the board’s policies."
Incidentally, Lapthorne’s own business sacked hundreds of workers
while offering top C&W executives a £216 million jackpot if they
could get it back on its feet. Lapthorne used to moonlight as chair of
health care ‘experts’ Amersham International and as chair of arms dealer
British Aerospace (killing and curing, all for profit – a weird
combination, except for Blair).
