Before we move on to education from health can we just comment on today’s Wirral Cabinet ‘good news’ item?
And can we just say there is no £20 million ‘boost’. It’s not an ‘investment’. It’s ‘Public Health’ money which appears to have been unimaginatively allocated to the usual suspects. This includes £7 million + to Change,Grow,Live (CGL) for their services – about which we still get a torrent of complaints about.
The ‘investment plan’ is as follows :
- Drug and alcohol services: £7,332,674
- Smoking cessation: £697,878
- Sexual health: £2,939,729
- Children (0-19): £6,909,800
- Weight management: £200,000
- Health checks: £306,029
- Mental health: £40,000
- Miscellaneous: £1,614,027
- Infection control: £223,578
Total = £20,263,715
Yes , you read that correctly . £40,000 for mental health.
Perhaps if Wirral Council invested money in mental health services from the get go perhaps they wouldn’t need to pick up the tab further down the line for the sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll casualties. Just sayin’ !
However , on to education and the ‘ Multi Academy Trust’ (MAT) consultation involving Woodchurch High School. For those interested everything can be found here:
http://www.woodchurchhigh.com/poll.php
Why we were particularly interested in highlighting this story was because our source gave us a handy summary of the proposals :