C and Unbelieve

It’s an unwelcome return to Wirral Leaks to our old fiends Change! Grow! Live! , Wirral Ways To Recovery, Money,Money,Money or whatever they’re calling themselves these days!

We’re unhappy to report just how they’re earning their £7 million + from the Wirral Council Public Health budget from a thoroughly disillusioned insider:

Just when you thought Change Grow Live Wirral integrated drug and alcohol system couldn’t get any worse ‘‘just’ in keeping people alive they’ve botched it up again.

For over 4 years they have been testing people for Hep C and HIV with ‘faulty kits’ and gave some  people their hep C results as being “not positive/negative”. When in fact the tests they used were faulty and some of the people they told were negative have in fact  been positive! public health  issue I think you’ll agree? 

Everyone has to be re: tested and guess who is picking up the bill?…well its not the ‘charity’ commissioned to carry screenings out who’s income grew to £193 million last year -(which is what they’ve disclosed in their report so who knows what the actually amount is!)  but the NHS via Arrowe Park Hospital. 

How long did they know about this before acting on it… 6 months! 

Up for tender too following an increase of 29% in drug related deaths nationally. Which they conveniently relate to “an aging population”. Well indeed but coincidentally those in the brackets of ‘aging population’ when treated by professionals in the past didn’t die at such ludicrous numbers.  

Come on commissioners wake up. 

Its not working on our doorsteps. Get it right surely people’s lives are worth more?

But hey! CGL have at least got a Hepatitis C strategy. Surely it’s gotta be worth millions of pounds of public money for consistently failing their patients and the public purse?…

Defend Our NHS : walk-in back to (un)happiness?

 

Dear friends of the NHS

Are you ready to be insulted? You probably will be (again) on next month. Read on!

Insult and minor injury

Before Christmas 32,000 people signed petitions opposing the proposed damaging changes to Wirral’s walk-in and minor injuries services.

The petitions (organised by us and by local doctors and other campaign groups) also called for the board of Wirral’s clinical commissioning group (CCG) to organise meetings in every Council ward to explain themselves.

In November Wirral councillors* demanded that the related farcical ‘consultation’ be ended and that “…the CCG come back to clinicians and patient group[s] to discuss meaningful and open proposals to retain the existing community-based services and improve the services, not at the cost of them being subsumed into a new Urgent Treatment Centre (UTC) at Arrowe Park Hospital”.

And what was the CCG response? They said ‘consultation’ would continue as planned but “notes the motion”. They said they would ‘listen’ to the thousands (having based the changes on the alleged ‘confusion’ of a few hundred).

The arguments should (but there’s no guarantee) be aired again in February. AND WE URGE YOU TO ATTEND TO MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD.

• On Tuesday, 5th February 2019 at 2.00pm in Birkenhead Town Hall there’s a meeting of the Joint Strategic Commissioning Board*. Three Wirral councillors (Councillor Chris Jones, Councillor Bernie Mooneyand Councillor Stuart Whittingham  will meet a mass of CCG representatives to continue the now agreed plans to run local health and care services jointly. Oh, by the way, the Council now picks up the tab when the CCG gets into (more) financial hot water, acting (to quote the document) in a ‘cash management/banking role until anticipated income is received’.
• Then on Tuesday 12th February from 1.00pm in the Exmouth Room at the Lauries in Birkenhead it’s the CCG Governing Body meeting. Will they have listened by then?  They tell us that “An analysis of the feedback received during the consultation period has commenced.  This will be considered along with other evidence by the NHS Wirral CCG Governing Body later in the year [no date given].  The analysis and report is being completed by an external organisation.” (Uh, oh! We hope it’s not PWC!)

*Ignorance or hypocrisy?  Wirral Council wins at Pointless

Wirral councillors do not seem to realise that they can condemn walk-in changes as loudly as they like but their opposition is pointless. Why? They have signed a ‘Section 75’ agreement with the CCG. That’s part of the ‘sustainability and transformation/accountable care/integrated care’ system which the Council has been aiding and abetting for years – while denying it was happening. It includes ‘urgent care transformation’ and the end of current walk-in services. That’s why persuading them to change direction and defend our NHS is ever more important.

So, who said romance is dead?

What more appropriate date on which to discover the answer to that question than Thursday 14^th February? We will be holding our next public meeting that evening (details soon) and hope that you will share your Valentine’s Day with fellow romantics determined to Defend Our NHS.

Best wishes on behalf of DONHS

 

Wirral University Teaching Hospital : The Empty Chair

 

Our well placed Wirral University Teaching Hospital source writes to update us on the Wirral University Teaching Hospital (WUTH) Chair appointment situation and to give an insight into the current management culture:

Dear Mr Justice

It is just possible your piece last year that Sir David Henshaw was the sole candidate may have had an impact.
It was announced last week, to senior medical staff, that the interview for the chair has NOT yet taken place, contradicting an earlier (and minuted) announcement that it in fact had, and the decision was to be announced by end November.
Details are sparse but it is now believed there are now 3 candidates who will be interviewed “within days”.
Cynics say the rumour that applicants are: Sir David Henshaw and his best-mates -in -all-the-world Sir Duncan Nichol and Sir David Dalton – and Nichol & Dalton are “ringers” and will drop out are wide of the mark, and the truth is considerably stranger than this fiction.
Other WUTH news includes virtue signalling of epic proportions:
Only recycled paper is now used in WUTH – which went paper free some years ago !
WUTH are “refreshing” it’s PROUD* values ! (see below)
No one is sure what this actually means, or if it can mean anything –  but in practical terms all employees have to undertake “learnings” in 2 hour sessions where they are reminded not to be beastly to their workmates.
The “usual suspects” deliver this advice without any trace of irony – senior management do not attend these sessions but all attendees are reassured senior management attend different sessions – and chillingly; at those senior management sessions feedback from the “learnings” is discussed. 

On re-reading this I am forced to admit that none of it makes any sense – but it does give an accurate picture of the overarching strategy that underpins the organisation your readers will turn to when their own health is in peril… 

*Who could ever forget this ? PROUD? Er, it’s a no from us …

Defend Our NHS report : Theresa May’s launch of the NHS Long Term Plan should fool no-one

 

Dear friends of the NHS

Please read and share widely.

This email is based on press releases by Merseyside KONP and national KONP/Health Campaigns Together (to whom thanks) and information from the Defend Our NHS team.  The photograph is from the Guardian web site and the cartoon from the Times.

On Monday Theresa May was welcomed to Liverpool by Merseyside KONP, Save Liverpool Women’s Hospital campaign, Defend Our NHS and a hundred protestors who gave her a very clear message on her plan.

Protestors know the reality – and how things are getting worse. At Arrowe Park Hospital bed occupancy has been 99.3% against a safe level of 85%. And last year ambulances had to wait more than an hour to hand over their patient to the hospital 2,477 times, up from just 80 in 2013/14.

The Royal Liverpool Hospital has been on ‘Red Alert’ at least 25 times since 1 December. Bed occupancy is 92.3%, In December, 495 ambulances waited over 30 minutes to discharge their patients, and 135 of these waited over 60 minutes. Last week, some patients waited over 3 hours to be seen in A&E, and some in A&E waited 24 hours for a hospital bed.

In Liverpool a major problem is that the half-built Carillion PFI hospital was designed with fewer beds; capacity at the Royal was cut to match the plans. The Trust justified the cuts, claiming that Care in the Community would reduce demand.

And in Wirral the CCG’s proposals to slash services at walk-in centres will compound the problem.

May’s plan, written by NHS England Chief Exec Simon Stevens*, will replicate this all over England, shifting resources out of hospital, promoting digital technology (with the secretary of state Matt ‘Appcock’ anxious to replace GP consultations) and telling patients to look after themselves.

Rationing

Last winter, former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt suddenly postponed all elective (planned) operations to ease the pressure on hospitals. Now, an NHS England document Preparing for 2019/20 Operational Planning and Contracting intends to ensure that ‘as much of [sic] inpatient elective activity occurs in the first half of the year, before winter’.

The document also includes a rationing plan for 17 NHS treatments no longer to be commissioned by CCGs. Trusts are also urged to ‘grow their external (non-NHS) income’ and ‘work towards securing the benchmarked potential for commercial income growth’. Hence the ward at Clatterbridge Hospital recently handed over to Four Seasons Health.

Trusts must set up systems to raise money by charging patients for treatment (‘overseas visitor cost recovery’) – a policy recently denounced by several medical Royal Colleges because of its impact on individual and public health.

Long term agenda

The 44 discredited Sustainability and Transformation Plans, re-branded as Integrated Care Systems, will hold the regional budgets to control NHS Trusts. ‘Planning assumptions’ in each STP area are to be agreed by 14 January. Neither the STPs, nor the ICSs, nor the Long Term Plan have been mandated by an Act of Parliament, let alone by patients or health workers. Yet, despite protests and clear evidence of the dangers, Wirral Council has charged at full speed into the STP and an ‘integrated’ partnership with the local clinical commissioning group. (We will be writing again soon about the ongoing legal challenge to this.)

The private sector could gain control of individual ICSs through long term contracts to manage the entire health system within one region.

Real integration of health and social care can only take place when the profit motive is taken out, with care fully-staffed and resourced, publicly accountable, funded through general taxation, and provided free at the point of need.

John Lister, editor of Health Campaigns Together said:

All of the main lines of what has been published or leaked about the Plan are a depressing re-run of previous plans and gimmicks: the only novel proposals are for more central control and less accountability, for trusts to run more like and with private businesses seeking profits, and to raise money by undermining the principles and values of the NHS through charging overseas visitors – a government policy widely condemned by NHS professional staff and campaigners as discriminatory and a step backwards from prevention and public health.

There is no reason to believe this plan, with even less local accountability and no serious plans for public consultation, will prove any more acceptable to the public or successful in implementation than the secretive STPs in 2016 or other previous failed efforts.

Campaigners have yet to see anything to recommend the new plans, or any indication NHS England is willing to come to grips with the crisis fuelled by chronic austerity limits on funding – or demand an end to chaos and fragmentation of the Health & Social Care Act.”

Dr Tony O’Sullivan, KONP Co-chair and retired consultant paediatrician, said:

The government has cut £7bn to social care and has underfunded the NHS by £20bn in annual funding over the last 9 years. There is no plan to repair the damage done. Platitudes about prevention and better health are exposed by the £1bn cuts to the public health budget responsible for prevention.

After 9 years undermining mental health, the ‘extra’ now committed is not new money but comes from elsewhere within NHS funding. Theresa May’s assertion that the NHS has never received higher funding is simply not true in relation to NHS funding required to meet need.

Over 210,000 vacancies in NHS and social care and unacceptable stress carried by staff, dangerous waits for A&E, cancer care and surgery, all tell the true story. And the fact that private health providers get 50% of their funds from treating patients diverted from an NHS deprived of the resources to treat them itself exposes the policy direction of government. We cannot accept this situation.’

Watch out for some further analysis of the NHS Long Term Plan which we’ll share by email to this list and on our Facebook page.

DONHS on Facebook

* Mr Stevens’ previous job? “His responsibilities include leading UnitedHealth’s strategy for, and engagement with, national health reform, ensuring its businesses are positioned for changes in the market and regulatory environment.”

 

Wirral’s NHS crisis : petition to save five walk-in centres and other news from Defend Our NHS

Dear friends

There are four things we would like to bring to your attention. As usual we would be grateful if you could take action and also share this message with your contacts.

Make no mistake: in the past week Wirral’s NHS crisis has turned into an emergency. The proposal from the local branch of NHS England (the clinical commissioning group/CCG) to close all five of Wirral’s walk-in clinics is shocking.

It is a further nail in Wirral’s NHS coffin and follows the phoney logic of the CCG and Wirral Council’s ‘integration’ of health and care, and their move to ‘place-based care’ (whatever that means*).

Our well-attended public meeting (with GPs and other health and care professionals speaking and in the audience) in Birkenhead last week discussed this and launched an immediate campaign to SAVE OUR WALK-IN CENTRES.

Please support these four actions:

1. Read, share and display the attached leaflet. Thousands of these are being distributed around Wirral with the support of local GPs who, like us, believe that the proposed closures are idiotic.
2. Try to attend and spread the word about the meetings and events listed on the leaflet. In particular we urge your attendance on: Tuesday 16th October: a lobby of Wirral’s new joint commissioning body meeting (the Council and the CCG): gather from 1.00pm outside and then inside Birkenhead Town Hall. Thursday 18th October: Defend Our NHS public meeting from 7.00pm also in Birkenhead Town Hall to discuss the GP and walk-in crises.
3. Sign and share the petition which is gathering signatures all over Wirral. It is attached for printing and further use but also on-line at https://www.change.org/p/defend-our-nhs-save-our-wirral-walk-in-centres
4. Support the judicial review which will challenge the legality of the national and local plans for NHS ‘integration’ if we can raise the funds. Find out more at: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/justice4nhs-stage5-courtofappeal/

Thank you and best wishes on behalf of Defend Our NHS

https://www.facebook.com/groups/defendournhs/

* You may have more luck than us. We have yet to find a councillor who can answer the questions in this test in their own words. The questions originated in Calderdale which is experiencing the same mayhem as we are in Wirral: http://www.energyroyd.org.uk/archives/16190

Petition sheet Oct 2018

Wirral Leaks Weekly Dispatch #17

THE OTHER HALF

We’ve been sent the other half of the Labour Party leaflet distributed in Birkenhead & Tranmere during the recent local election campaign..

Might we suggest that the Green Party stick to their ethical principles and recycle this leaflet next time the local elections roll around. They just need to cross out where it says : ‘Pat Cleary lives in West Kirby’ and replace it with ‘Phil Davies lives in West Kirby’.  Of course there would be very little chance of  Power Boy Pip getting elected where he actually lives. So with the Green Party increasingly making inroads in traditional Labour wards perhaps Pip will need to look for a safer seat come the next local elections. Then he won’t have to rely on his Sat Nav to steer him towards the ward he apparently represents in Birkenhead & Tranmere to find out how the other half lives.

SUFFRAGETTE CITY

Oh dear – forever late to the party here’s the Labour ladies with their kitten heels on the new carpet and their green and purple rosettes commemorating female suffrage. It must pain them to wear green and to add insult to injury doesn’t red and blue make purple? We just hope they realise that in 1918, Parliament passed an act  which only granted the vote to women over the age of 30 who were householders, the wives of householders, occupiers of property with an annual rent of £5, and graduates of British universities.It wasn’t until 1928 that a Conservative Party led Parliament passed the Representation of the People ( Equal Franchise) Act  which granted 21 year old women the right to vote on the same terms as men.

Sadly for us there is  no appearance from Wirral Leaks regular – former Labour councillor Louise Reecejones (LRJ)  –  who was quietly replaced at the recent local elections by Cllr Kate Cannon. This is consistent to the Stalinist approach that the local Labour group take when it comes to historical  events. If there’s one thing they excel at it’s erasing people and events from their own history.

COURT REPORTS

This looks like it may develop into a regular feature. The latest news is that long time Wirral Leaks contributor Nigel ‘Highbrow’ Hobro finally gets his day in court.

Birkenhead County Court – 10.30am, Tuesday 22nd May 2018  (TOMORROW) 

Now we don’t know the precise details of the case against Wirral Council so we don’t know whether any members of the public will be able to attend the hearing. However we hope to provide you details of proceedings at a later date.

As we promised in Wirral Leaks Weekly Dispatch 15 : There is still no news on the outcome of the Morton v Information Commissioner‘s Office and Wirral Borough Council case . We also understand that our other main Wirral institution is also keeping under wraps a matter that will soon come before Liverpool Crown Court. We’ll keep you posted………

And sure enough whilst there is still no news on the Morton v ICO & Wirral Council case there have been developments on the Damien Renshaw child porn case ( which as far as we know as not been reported on Wirral and which we’ve known about since his suspension and subsequent sacking .Meanwhile Wirral Globe chose to tell us about Paul Thompson ,a nurse at Arrowe Park Hospital who has been struck off by the Nursing & Midwifery Council (NMC) for amongst many other misdemeanours  messaging a 18 year old colleague on Facebook saying he wanted ‘to give her a bed bath with his tongue’. Nice. Read more here : APH nurse struck off

Might we suggest that whilst this conduct is utterly repulsive it is hardly in the same league as former Arrowe Park Hospital IT worker Damien Renshaw . The 34 year old –  – was last week found guilty of downloading child porn. Read more here : Smirking Paedophile

It’s cases like these that provide us with an understanding of the  toxic culture within some parts of Wirral University Teaching Hospital (WUTH) than any number of independent inquiries.

AND FINALLY 

There was a news story this week where the headline read :  Shirley Ballas swears at Johnny Vegas on Celebrity Juice.  

Has the silly season arrived early ? Now we know hasbeen hoofer Ballas was born in Wallasey but as far as pitching a local angle on a (non) news story goes this is about as tenuous as it gets. What next ? Paul Hollywood eats cake on The Great British Bake Off ?

 

Wirral Leaks Weekly Dispatch #11

Apologies for the late edition of our weekly dispatch. A bit too much pastis over le weekend – that’s the French spirit and not the Gregg’s delicacy obvs !

MARKS OF EXTINCTION

So farewell then to Birkenhead’s Marks and Spencer. And what a sorry sight you leave behind. No more sourdough bread and sturdy gussets. Even the intervention of Birkenhead MP Frank Field couldn’t save it from extinction. Is Frankenfield losing his touch ? After failing to get ‘Sir’ Philip Green stripped of his knighthood  and as yet not succeeding in getting car parking for nurses at Arrowe Park Hospital scrapped he’ll have to go back to getting his own way with Wirral Council and DWP .

However the good news for the down town trackie-clad denizens of Birkenhead is that they will be well served by JD Sports moving to larger ,refurbished premises.

USING OUR IMAGINATION

Although being a contributor to the cultural life of Wirral (!) we unfortunately couldn’t attend the February launch of the Wirral Council programme Imagine Wirral which apparently is about celebrating culture,creativity and ideas. Other than the re- branding of ‘The Leisure Peninsula’ and the website there hasn’t been an awful lot going on at #ImagineWirral since its launch so we’re left using our imagination as to what it’s all about – other than promoting established events and gegging in with a bit of opportunistic branding. If Wirral Council leisure guru Cllr Christine Spriggs could enlighten us further we’d appreciate it……

POTHOLE OF THE WEEK

So with the news that central government has allocated some money from its £100 million pothole fund to Liverpool City Region out of which Wirral Council gets a whopping £184,000 (which judging by the state of Wirral’s roads we all know won’t go very far), especially when we consider this example sent to us from Tranmere :

HUB OF THE WEEK

Excellent work here from the Peel Group. There are so many buzzword bingo boxes ticked with our headline of the year so far:

 

Exciting new ‘pop up’ leisure hub for Wirral Waters

 

As an added bonus there’s the obligatory artist’s impression :

 

Find it in all its glory here

and finally….. HOLE OF THE WEEK

Yes – we’re sure you’ve all seen the guy having sex with a hole on the Brackenwood golf course. As this is a family blog (!) we’ll leave you to find the footage on Youtube for yourself. But when it comes to leisure and celebrating culture,creativity and ideas on Wirral perhaps we can expect find it , er,popping up on the Imagine Wirral website soon!

Wirral University Teaching Hospital : #Proud ?

In the week that people were urged to stay away  from Arrowe Park Hospital (APH) A&E because of a surge in demand we get an insight into one of the many reasons how things got that way.  Read more here APH A&E

Our thanks go out to a concerned Wirral citizen who is asking all the right questions of Wirral University Teaching Hospital (WUTH) . The response they received to their Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request is an eye-opener to say the least. As previously reported David Allison ‘stepped down’ as CEO of WUTH in December . Read more here

We now find out Allison is currently ‘working his six months notice period’ . To which we can only ask – from where? The Caribbean ? Wherever Allison is he’ll still be getting half of his £300K annual salary for doing precisely NOTHING .

Considering the failures detailed in the damning report which we included in the Marmalizing the Bullies : St Frank or Sir Diddy ? post we need to ask whether such generous rewards for failing those who pay for and rely on the NHS should be allowed to continue.

And that’s not the end of it ! –  Question 5  in the FOI  request below relates to general allegations (current) at APH and although not necessarily against Allison, it is shocking to consider that there are SIX ( count’em !) ongoing bullying investigations .

Might we suggest that under the circumstances that the @wuthnhs#proud  #PROUD branding needs to be put on hold until investigations are completed . How can NHS Improvement and WUTH management possibly be proud of any of this?

Defend Our NHS : fight-back time!

DONHS : action meeting 2 March 

With all the bad news emanating from our local NHS we are pleased to post the latest missive from local people who are trying to defend our  great institution rather than see its demise as a career opportunity!

Dear friends of the NHS

Defend Our NHS: action meeting!

The public meeting on Friday (March 2) was a big success. There was a good turn-out despite the awful weather, our speakers were excellent, and the meeting joined in enthusiastically to shape our strategy for forthcoming weeks and months,

We asked – and attendees answered – three questions:

1. What is your main concern about the NHS?
2. What should WE ALL do about our concerns?
3. Will YOU actively join our campaign?

Now it’s YOUR chance to join in the fight to stop the awful local and national damaging changes to our NHS as it is ‘slashed, trashed and privatised’.

How? Come to our next PUBLIC MEETING: Friday 16TH March from 7.00pm at The Welcome Centre, 43 Hamilton Street, CH41 5AA, Birkenhead.

Meanwhile THIS THURSDAY Wirral Clinical Commissioning Group is holding a ‘public engagement’ event at Heswall Hall, Heswall (8th March 2018 from6.30pm).

You might want to ask them: 1) why they are supporting a ‘pop-up’ maternity centre in Seacombe when so much medical evidence is against the idea; 2) why are they continuing to implement local changes to the NHS when WIRRAL COUNCIL HAS VOTED TO OPPOSE THEM.

Is it right that, in 2018 in one of the richest countries in the world, we have headlines like this one in the Liverpool Echo last week about Arrowe Park?

“Nurses ‘forced to wear COATS’ and patients left ‘freezing’ as hospital heating breaks. Staff gave out blankets – fears pregnant mums and young children were also affected.”

YOU can join us to fight to restore a decent NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE.

Best wishes on behalf of Defend Our NHS

defendournhswirral@gmail.com 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/defendournhs/

https://twitter.com/DefendourNHS

 

Marmalizing the Bullies : St Frank or Sir Diddy ?

Let the marmalization commence.

The previously leaked report written by ‘experienced independent investigator’ Carole Taylor Browne that prompted the departure of Wirral University Teaching Hospital (WUTH) chair Michael Carr was officially published today. Read full report here : NHSI WUTH Final report

Ms Taylor-Brown has her own consultancy specialising in ‘Executive and Group coaching, Workplace Investigation and Mediation’ called Tamarix People which sounds like a John Wyndham novel or interplanetary baddies in an episode of Dr Who. Read more here: Tamarix People

However it would appear that essentially Taylor-Brown is your classic ex-NHS poacher turned gamekeeper.  We’re not sure her report tells us anything we didn’t already know about the bullying culture (particularly at Arrowe Park Hospital). Read more here : WUTH – Carr Crash OUT, Sir Diddy IN

However our interest in the story was reignited with the inevitable sneering soundbites from Birkenhead MP Frank Field on the appointment by NHS Improvement of new troubleshooting chair Sir ‘Diddy’ David Henshaw.

“At last we have a proper soul-searching report on Arrowe Park which has been many a year coming. I’ve been campaigning for years for root and branch reform at Arrowe Park. Had MPs been consulted on a new interim Chair, we would not have advised in favour of Sir David Henshaw. We badly need an interim Chair who has a track record of opposing and dealing effectively with bullying and poor behaviour.I will be asking the Secretary of State to appoint such a Chair. How will the hospital now deal with the bullies? I have been given a list of names, who maybe account for only some of the bullies, but we need a Chair in whom those members of staff who have been bullied can trust. I call again for one of the companies dealing with this all the time to come in as an independent body to kick-start a recovery in standards”.

Whilst we agree with Frankenfield on one thing ( that’s a first !) – and that is Sir Diddy is definitely not the man for this particular job – we had to laugh at his whining that if he (and presumably other Wirral MPs ) had been ‘consulted’ on the Sir Diddy appointment that it would not have got their seal of approval. Sorry to have to tell you sweetheart this ain’t Wirral Council – not everything gets run past you first!

As for Field’s ‘Bully List’ – perhaps we should start one up with names of bullies ,both officers and councillors , past and present  ,  who have  been responsible for destroying people’s lives and careers at Wirral Council.  Then we can send it to him and wait for him to tell us with an innocent face that he doesn’t interfere in Wirral Council business!