Health campaigners slam NHS plan secrecy

(taken from the Slide presentation to the Scrutiny Committee)

Health campaigners have criticised the decision to withhold the Sustainability and Transformation plan on the future of the local NHS from the Health, Wellbeing and the Environment Overview and Scrutiny Committee to prevent it from being available to the public.

According to the report going to today’s meeting of the Committee:

“On 28th September, the HOSC chairs of Birmingham and Solihull will receive a private briefing on the status of the STP plan. We cannot release the plan to Scrutiny in the normal way as this would in effect release it into the public domain, which we are currently being advised not to do until after 21st October.”

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BATC Public meeting: The West Midlands Combined Authority – what it is and what it should be

The West Midlands Combined Authority – what it is and what it should be. For a People’s Plan for the WMCA

Birmingham Against the Cuts Public Meeting, Tuesday 4 October 7pm, Council House.

Green light given for Children’s Services Trust outsourcing proposals

Moves to outsource children’s social care services in Birmingham progressed after the Council Cabinet yesterday gave the green light for detailed proposals to be drawn up for either a wholly owned company or an employee owned mutual to run the care services.

While the Council would retain full legal responsibility an independent trust would run the services on its behalf. The Trust proposals will potentially affect 1,200 employees whose employment would be transferred out of the Council.

Act now to keep your Children’s Centre open!

The redesign of Birmingham’s Early Years services is likely to take the best part of 5-6 years from conception to execution. Birmingham’s Early Years Services currently provide support to around 100,000 parents and 80,000 children at any one time. Early years services consist of Children’s centres, Health Visitors, Parenting support and Pregnancy and breastfeeding support services which support parents from the time a child is conceived up until the age of 5.

There has been a major service review over a nearly 3 three year period, and the current procurement process up to the award of the new contract is likely to take a further 10-11 months, there will be a further period where the contract is implemented. This extended period of time and the convoluted nature of the processes involved have provided useful political cover to the Council’s Labour leadership who have still not had to name and own the actual cuts and closures in Early Years services to come.

NHS plans slammed as ‘opaque and semi-secretive’

Cllr John Cotton heavily criticised the lack of public accountability and transparency involved in drawing up the Sustainability and Transformation Plans which will shape how local NHS services are provided over the next five years.

National conference on Combined Authorities called by Greater Manchester TUCs on 24 September

Devolution: a grassroots assessment and response – towards a  People’s Plan? Contributions from trades union activists, community campaigners, academics and politicians on economic strategy, housing, transport, environment, NHS, democracy etc.

Closure proposals for city NHS Walk-in Centres

Proposals that could see the closure of all or some of the current of Birmingham’s 8 urgent care centres are being prepared for public consultation in the Autumn by the Cross City Clinical Commissioning Group. Urgent care is where an illness or Injury is urgent but not life threatening.

The Urgent care centres received a total of 322,058 annual visits at the last count . The busiest NHS walk-in centre is at Katie Road in Selly Oak which received some 64,000 visitors and is the only centre south of the city centre. The next busiest centre is Summerfield with 52,000 visitors.

On the Voluntary Children’s Services Trust and problems of being a Corporate parent

The fault lines of the proposed ‘Voluntary Children’s Services Trust’ model and its relationship with the Local authority started to appear at the discussion at Cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

The report prepared by Deloitte setting out the case for change for moving some social work services into a Trust arrangement was accepted by Council’s Cabinet and received backing from the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Groups.

A set of organisational options for a Trust were identified by Deloitte and a further report will be made to Cabinet in September setting out the preferred shortlist of models. Cllr Brigid Jones, the responsible Cabinet member,  also said the Council would undertake a ‘market testing’ exercise over the summer to identify whether there were sufficient people of the right sort who could serve as Trustees on a future Trust Board.

On options for the “Voluntary Children’s services Trust’

Dear Cabinet member,

The future of social work with children and families in Birmingham

On Tuesday you will consider a report prepared by Deloitte on the Birmingham children’s services model which sets out 19 potential models for delivering children’s social care services and a framework of critical success factors which a model would need to meet. The Cabinet report recommends that these different delivery models are appraised by Deloitte over the summer and a report with preferred options should be presented to Cabinet in September.

A matter of trust! – the ‘spinning off’ of Birmingham’s Children’s social care

Children’s services support the most vulnerable children in our society. They are in our care; we, the state, are their parents; and we are failing them. It is our duty to put this right; to say poorly performing local authorities: improve, or be taken over. We will not stand by while children are let down by inadequate social services. (my emphasis) (1)

David Cameron – the Prime Minister

Birmingham City Council recently announced it had commissioned Deloitte to draw up plans which could see Council run Children’s social care services being transferred to an independent Trust. The Trust announcement was made immediately prior to the screening of a critical Dispatches programme where an ‘undercover’ social worker filmed within the social care department at the end of May.

The Trust proposal was discussed at the full meeting of the Council which took place on 14th June 2016 where the Conservative group called for the resignation of Cllr Brigid Jones the lead Cabinet member for Children’s services.