With the publication of the NHS Long Term Plan, an expected Social Care Green Paper and the drive towards integrated services through Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships and Integrated Care Systems, health and care continues to feature as one of the most high profile policy challenges we face as a country. Tackling inequalities and improving population health are key to successfully keeping people healthy and living independently for as long as possible, as well as making sure that people can access effective treatment and support when they need it. Overview and scrutiny and other forms of local assurance have a vital ...
In December 2016, the Health Committee published an interim report on suicide prevention in order to inform the Government's updated suicide prevention strategy. The Government subsequently published its update to the strategy in the form of a progress report. Witnesses told the Committee’s latest inquiry that the underlying strategy is essentially sound but that the key problem lies with inadequate implementation. 95% of local authorities now have a suicide prevention plan, but there is currently little or no information about the quality of those plans. The Committee noted that there is a role for local scrutiny of implementation of suicide ...
In July 2016, NHS England published a set of proposals regarding the future commissioning of congenital heart disease (CHD) services for children and adults. They describe the actions which NHS England proposes to take in order to ensure a consistent standard of care for CHD patients across the country, for now and for the future. NHS England proposes to do this by implementing national service standards at every hospital that provides CHD services. The effect of the proposals, if implemented, will be that some hospitals will carry out more CHD surgery and catheter procedures, while others, which do not meet ...
The referendum result has shifted the ground under what are already a tough set of challenges faced by NHS and social care managers. The health and care system is experiencing some unprecedented pressures – and uncertainty about the impact of Brexit will add to the complexity.Money for the health service (nobody mentioned social care – they hardly ever do) was given a high profile by the Leave campaign and has been the subject of much commentary since last Friday morning. Of course, any additional money for the NHS may eventually help to bring down the deficits running in the ...
CfGS can: help develop members’ skills in all key areas of local government policy.Who: CfGS’ Regional Advisor Brenda Cook ran a development session in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, helping primarily experienced members of the Council develop their skills and reinforce their understanding of health scrutiny. Based off the requests of the scrutiny officer, Brenda tailored her session towards filling in the gaps – for example, how members should pick topics based on what would be the best usage of their time as opposed to what they might have seen on the news. There was an extended Q&A session where members were able ...
It's that time of year. The clocks have changed, the days are getting shorter, traditional Christmas music enhances our shopping experience...Soon we can expect to start hearing about ‘leaves on the line’ or ‘the wrong kind of snow’ or other circumstances that tend to annually disrupt our lives and which, on the face of it, seem to defeat the best efforts of service providers.Of course, it's important to get these circumstances in perspective, because a late train or congested car journey are not the worst of life challenges in social or global terms. But understanding risks and building ...