Of park benches and toilets

Seven Kings and Newbury Park Resident's Association features in the Ilford Recorder this week because we have donated a bench to Seven Kings Park. The bench, which has been donated from monies raised by SKNPRA through fundraising events, has been located alongside the path leading from the park to King George Hospital and the A12 alongside Happy Valley. This location was chosen as a useful resting point, alongside Seven Kings Water, on the walk to and from the hospital.

This is the second additional bench which SKNPRA has been able to obtain for the local community. The first is located in Aldborough Road South and was provided by the Council as part of our Living Streets project.

We will be returning to Seven Kings Park tomorrow at 2.30pm for the re-opening of the toilets in the Park. These were closed in 2011 as part of austerity cuts by the Council in the borough. SKNPRA led a campaign against their closure and has since worked with councillors and officials to enable their re-opening. Their reopening has been has been the result of a significant local campaign and much behind the scenes negotiation led by our membership Secretary, Mark Kennedy. We are therefore thrilled that the toilets are to be re-opened.

SKNPRA is organising a Community Information Day to be held on Saturday 18th May between 11.00am and 1.00pm in the community garden at St John's Seven Kings. This event provides an opportunity for community groups and those organisations providing services in the local community to promote their organisation and meet local people.

We will be promoting the event locally and St John's Church will also be holding a Plant & Table-top Sale in the St Johns Centre at the same time. The combination of these two events on a previous occasion - see http://joninbetween.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/creating-community-event-2.html - proved very successful.

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Deacon Blue - Here I Am In London Town.

A new consensus on saving KGH

Today St John's Seven Kings hosted a meeting of the Save King George Hospital campaign. The following was my contribution to the debate:

With Andrew Lansley’s decision to make the closure of A&E and Maternity Services at King George Hospital conditional on the Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust achieving the recommendations in the Care Quality Commission’s report, we reach a new and more complex stage in the campaign opposing the Trust’s plans.

Our consensus to date has been simple and clear; to oppose the closure of A&E and Maternity Services at King George. Now, though, we are also faced with the broader issue of campaigning for a better NHS deal overall for local residents. The two issues are tied together because the closure of A&E and Maternity Services at King George is conditional on the Trust achieving the targets set in the CQC report. Achieving those targets will improve the NHS deal for residents locally but will result in the closure of the services we wish to retain at King George.  

That seems a Catch 22 situation and there is indeed an element of dark comedy and bleak farce to the decision to close A&E and Maternity Services at King George Hospital. Something that Mike Gapes captured very well in the parliamentary debate he called on the matter. He said:

“… the [CQC] report makes it clear that although services at King George were reduced over the years, it has not led to efficiency savings. All it has done is reduce the quality of care in a hospital that serves my constituents and those of a number of other MPs. The cost of doing that has not led to improvements in efficiency; on the contrary, it has contributed to the ongoing deficit problems in the dysfunctional trust.

There we have it. The Secretary of State receives a report from the IRP recommending the endorsement of NHS London’s vision to downgrade services at King George hospital in Ilford. He then receives a report saying that there are two hospitals in the trust, covering 750,000 people in the community in the three boroughs, one of which is doing badly and there are criticisms of the other. He therefore endorses the recommendations to cut the services at the hospital that is doing better, on the aspiration, but with no evidence, that it will lead to a miraculous Stakhanovite improvement in the services at the bigger, supposedly better and more expensive hospital in the long term. You really could not make it up.”

On this basis, how can the Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust expect to reverse the situation, including delivering a better Maternity and A&E service - with the 25% less staff outlined in the closure plans and a rapid increase in the populations of the boroughs it serves - when the A&E service at Queens Hospital has been found to be approaching collapse by the CQC and large numbers of pregnant women are being diverted away from Queens/King George because existing staff cannot cope? Clearly, there needs to be tight, accurate monitoring of the improvements in service that the trust will claim as they seek to address the CQC targets. Ensuring that that occurs and that claimed improvements are real improvements should, presumably, be part of our campaign in its next phase.

Essentially, we need a new consensus for our campaign. Do we continue to campaign simply and solely against the closure of A&E and Maternity Services at King George or do we broaden our campaign to include a better NHS deal for our residents? Suggestions, which others have made for doing the latter, include:

 

1) Asking for a monthly report detailing how the trust is working towards meeting the targets set in the CQC report and holding quarterly meetings to discuss progress.

 

2) Seeking assurances that the two month deadline for caesarian sections to be brought back into the Trust to prevent women having to travel to Hackney is on track to be met.

 

3) Ask for A&E temporary closures to be published on the Health for NE London website within 48 hours. 

 

4) Seeking support for a research study into the mortality rates for people taken to Urgent Care Units who are then transferred to a proper A&E against those who go straight to an A&E.

So, how to take forward the campaign? That, I suggest, is the key question facing us today. It is also a key question facing us as we reflect on other successful community campaigns in this area as several of the key organisers involved in those campaigns are no longer able to take that work forward as they once did. I’m thinking of the three founder members of TASK particularly. As a result, there is a need to reassess how community campaigns are organised in future: whether we continue with single issue campaigns; whether we utilise local community groups like Resident’s Associations more effectively; whether we join a broader campaigning coalition like London CITIZENS, as Chris Connelly was suggesting before his move. I suggest a meeting be organised in the New Year to explore this issue with all those locally who are concerned to see improved facilities and resources in the local area.

That is a side issue though to today’s meeting and I hope and anticipate that through the inputs of other speakers we will hear ideas and proposals which can build a new consensus to take this vital campaign, which is about the future of health services in this area, further forward.

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Kids in Glass Houses - Gold Blood.

In the wake of the Lansley decision

After years of campaigning, petitions to the top of government and marches through the streets, the decision most of us were dreading was delivered on Thursday: King George Hospital’s accident and emergency unit and labour ward will close.
Here is a brief summary of the situation in the post Lansley decision on our local NHS from Helen Zammett of the Save KGH campaign.

Health authorities have been quick to seize on the news that Andrew Lansley has accepted the Independent Reconfiguration Panel’s recommendation to adopt Health for North East London’s plan for our local hospital trust to reduce health services at King George Hospital and increase services at Queen’s Hospital Romford ... but it’s not going to happen yet.

The CQC has demanded that before any changes can be made, a lot of work needs to be done to overcome severe failings in the current health service provision. So serious are these concerns to patient safety that the CQC has imposed emergency measures to move planned caesarean sections from Queens to the Homerton in Hackney, Queens has been restricted to 20 births a day and Kings to 7 and women from Essex will have to re-book with Essex hospitals.

When announcing his decision, Andrew Lansley said: “Patient safety and quality of care must be our top priority. I support the CQC’s findings and the decisions taken by the local NHS to support safe care at the Trust. When we can be sure that these decisions have resulted in sustainable improvements in the quality of services for local people, the next set of decisions ... will be implemented.”

Before the Health4NEL’s plan can be implemented, the CQC has told the Trust to develop an action plan to address the 73 recommendations which it has said are needed to ensure a real and sustainable improvement in patient safety and experience. They will then monitor how the plan is applied and progress made before any of Health4NEL’s plan can be activated.

The main problems which will need to be overcome first are:

• Maternity is considered the worst concern – poor service culture, staff shortages especially midwives and paediatricians, lack of learning from maternal deaths and incidents, abusive behaviour by some staff to patients and colleagues, lack of leadership by senior management.
• A+E unsafe working practices, delays and bottlenecks, struggling to cope with the volume of patients, especially during winter, lack of staff – in July 2011 there was a 31% vacancy of A+E consultants.
• Radiology insufficient radiography cover, low standard of work, inappropriate patient facilities due to lack of beds.
• Delays in day surgery and radiology treatment affecting the impact of treatment and care.
• Staff shortages less than 50% of staff at Queens are permanent, high levels of staff turnover, sickness, recruitment difficulties, high levels of vacancies – in June 2011 there was a 18% vacancy of nurses.

Other problems include poor response to complaints, lack of governance, lack of senior management expertise, lack of education and training, unprofessional behaviour of some staff.

It is unlikely that these problems will be solved quickly. Cynthia Bowyer the Chief Executive of the CQC said: “We have been forcing the Trust to address issues on a short term basis but we have real concerns about safety in the mid to longer term.”

The biggest obstacle to the implementation of the changes is capacity. Health4NEL’s plan is based upon reducing the number of patients at Kings and increasing them at Queens. However, it is clear that Queens is not coping with its current level of patients, so that the CQC supports a recommendation to permanently cap the number of maternal patients admitted to Queens.

This is why the CQC intervened with its emergency measures to reduce the number of maternity patients at Queens now. Maternity capacity levels are now becoming a problem at Whipps Cross and Newham hospitals, which will need to have additional facilities provided to cope with any increase in maternity patients. Queens capacity problems are also evident in A+E, radiology and day surgery.

To compound the problem, the Trust’s workforce strategy for 2010-2015 states: “To achieve the cost reduction plan the Trust anticipates that the headcount will need to reduce by circa 850 FTE (including temporary staff).” The CQC has found an increase in patient throughput. As this staffing reduction is part of Health4NEL’s case for supporting its plan, it shows a fatal flaw in this strategy.

The one good thing that has come out of all this is that there is formal recognition of concerns which have been dismissed or ignored in the past.

However, the bad thing that has come about is the adverse publicity about Kings and particularly Queens, which will make future recruitment even more difficult.

Once the Trust has been able to demonstrate to the CQC that it has solved its problems on a sustainable basis, the Health4NEL plan can go ahead ... but are these problems solvable given the rise in population, lack of finance, staffing difficulties? If they are solvable, how long will it take?

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Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers - Hospital.

Launch of Arthritis Self-Help Network (London)

Last night I was at the launch of Arthritis Self-Help Network (ASNet) as a charity at Chigwell Hall.

ASNet began life as a support group for those with rheumatoid arthritis at King George Hospital in 2000. Over the years ASNet has grown to deliver many different projects such as Creative Writing, Evening Therapy Sessions, a day out for the housebound in partnership with Redbridge Voluntary Care, GP Education days, 6 week course called ‘Living Life Differently with Arthritis’, and Pain Management Sessions.

With ASNet's launch as a charity there have also come further new developments including a website containing film interviews with members (which can also be seen on http://www.humanrightstv.com/) and a contract to become part of the ‘Enabled 4 Growth’ programme run by the Leonard Cheshire Disability. This programme is designed to help new charities in all areas that are relevant for good practice and growth as well as teaching them how to become financially secure.

ASNet's founder, Diane Wynne-Fitzgerald says the time is right for ASNet because:

"Whatever the cause of disempowerment of people living with disability, in the twenty-first century we surely cannot pliantly accept such low social standards. Cases have to be made, positions adopted and followed through but most importantly the community must be empowered and supported practically. This is exactly why this charity is so important, at its core is the need to assist people to find their own powers, gain their own solutions and be in control of their own lives."

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 Monsters of Folk - The Right Place.

Save King George Hospital

The Save King George Hospital campaign is a multi-party, multi-faith campaign to persuade Andrew Lansley, the Secretary of State for Health to stop the closure of A and E and maternity services at King George Hospital, Ilford. Yesterday I took part in the day of the protests which began outside Queens Hospital and included a march to Ilford Town Hall for a rally where more than 500 people heard speeches from John Cryer, Mike Gapes, Margaret Hodge, Lee Scott and local faith leaders, including myself. My contribution was as follows:


"What will be gained by this proposed reorganisation and who will benefit from it?

Clearly, we, the people of the affected boroughs, do not want it to happen. We have said so loudly and vociferously throughout the campaign but our voice has not been heeded by those in the Health Service who wish to push the changes through in the face of our opposition. As that is the case, we can only conclude that those who are driving these proposals either have some other agenda which benefits the Health Service itself or think that they know better than the huge number of local people who are opposed to these proposals.

So, on the one hand there is the possibility that this reorganisation is not about better service delivery to local people at all or the possibility that these proposals are paternalistic with so-called Health experts thinking that they know better than us what is good for us.

The whole direction of Government policy in the previous and current Government has been in terms of greater accountability to patients and yet these proposals ride roughshod over such accountability because those responsible for them insist on driving through in the face of overwhelming local opposition.

There are essentially two ways of delivering public services, whether as a Health Trust or a local authority, either you bring all your workers together in one place so that you reduce your costs and the public have to travel to you. Doing so, primarily benefits the Agency delivering the service and inconveniences those who use it. Alternatively, you locate your service as close to the people you are serving as it is feasible to do. This means you need more buildings and staff, rather than the public, are inconvenienced by having further to travel. This approach is about best practice and best customer service.

It is what we have now with locally delivered A and E and Maternity Services at King George Hospital. We must not lose it simply to satisfy Health Service managers pursuing their own agendas at the expense of hearing what we, the people they are in post to serve, are saying to them. What we are saying is simple and clear: Save King George Hospital."

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Writz - Night Nurse.

TASK Newsletter (25)

From Chris Connelley:


It has been a while so here is a rather packed TASK e-news follows. We hope you enjoy it.

Monthly meeting: Tuesday 5 April from 7-8pm at Gizem bakers, Seven Kings High Road

Each month, a group of us meet up to share news and plan our local activities over a cup of coffee in a very friendly and informal gathering, where all new faces are guaranteed a warm welcome. Last time we talked about improving the quality of the rented sector, crime and policing and how we can support the continued working of our local libraries as part of the Council's effort to improve community input into their running.

This month, amongst other things, we will be picking up on the recent changes at the Downshall Centre, planning our presence at the upcoming St. John's Community Day in May and deciding if we want to be part of the Council's local community festival in September.

March and rally for King George Hospital - Friday April 8th

It feels like the A and E and maternity services at KGH have been under threat for an eternity, with the government now demanding a full review on the closure threat, as pressure mounts on Queens at Romford following a number of bad news headlines and apparent difficulties even satisfactorily meeting existing demands upon it.

The latest public stage in the protest, which TASK has fully supported from day one, is a march and rally next friday, April 8, starting from Queens Hospital and processing along the Romford Road all the way through to Ilford Town Centre, where a meeting convened with local MPs will follow from 615pm at the Town Hall.

Recognising the ambition of the march, and the difficulty for many of us joining in during working hours or taking part over such a long route, organisers are asking residents to either join in from their home location or to turn up outside the Town Hall for a short rally at 6pm for just a few minutes to welcome the hardy marchers and demonstrate the maximum show of strength.

Library next steps: top authors come to town

Having saved our local Goodmayes Library after a fabulous cross-community campaign, we are now keen to see more book readings and events hosted locally here in the south of the borough, having been surprised at the dominance of libraries in Wanstead and Woodford and the north of the borough as host locations in the upcoming book and literature festival. That said, we do have some author sessions in our local sites, including

• May 7: Sagheer Afzal, author of The Reluctant Mullah at Seven Kings Library from 2. 30-4.15pm: a free event bookable online at 07931 740
• May 18th: Nikesh Shukla, author of Coconut Unlimited, at Goodmayes Library from 7.15- 9pm. Tickets £2.50 from 0208 708 7750

We ask that all our supporters attend if they can; and share this information with family and friends so we can secure best possible turnouts. We also welcome your ideas for future readings and events to this email address, which we promise to pass on to our contacts in library HQ as part of our regular conversations with them. And with the first anniversary of Seven Kings Library coming up in July, we want your ideas on how you think we can best celebrate its first birthday.

Redbridge Citizens

Looking forward a little, to May 18, TASK will be taking part in a public meeting for faith and community group leaders organised by top London community organising group Citizens UK, the aims of which are to develop relations between different parts of our diverse community sector, to share areas of interest and- if the will is there- to forge a common front to improve our borough in partnership with each other. The session will happen at the Kenneth More theatre from 6-8pm and more details can be obtained from Sheilla Patel at London Citizens on Sheilla.Patel@cof.org.uk.

Cafe de amore

We always like to support local small businesses and welcome the new owners at our Seven Kings station cafe, rebranded in smart new livery as cafe de amore, and offering great coffee and snacks at highly reasonable prices. They are now open until 2pm each weekday, and on Saturday, so even if you do not commute regularly, why not pop down to the London platform and give them a try.

That's it for now. See you all soon, Chris

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Lift To Experience - With Crippled Wings.

Save King George Hospital campaign

Following this morning's services, there was a planning meeting held at St Paul's Goodmayes for The Save King George Hospital campaign. The campaign is a multi-party, multi-faith campaign to persuade Andrew Lansley, the Secretary of State for Health to stop the closure of A&E and maternity services at King George Hospital, Ilford.

Proposals to close vital services at Redbridge's only hospital have been approved. There will be no A&E and no maternity services provided resulting in a reduction in beds from 400 to 50. This means that most people who live in Redbridge will have to go to Queen's Hospital Romford. The effect will be:

• much longer travel times to get to a hospital, especially important for ambulances to get to A&E. Queen's Hospital Romford is 4½ miles from King George Hospital in Goodmayes along the A12, the worst A road in Britain;
• Queens Hospital will serve 700,000 people while inner London hospitals will each serve an average of just over 200,000;
• one hospital (Queens) will serve three boroughs, while the inner London boroughs will each have their own hospital;
• Queens will be unable to cope as this is already the case with ambulances frequently turned away because the hospital is full;
• no baby will be born in future in a Redbridge hospital;
• Redbridge will lose its maternity service while Barking has a new maternity unit;
• Redbridge will no longer have a major hospital while Barking and Dagenham will each get a community hospital.

This information comes from the campaign which is organising a public meeting, to be addressed by Iain Duncan Smith MP, Ken Livingstone, other faith and community speakers, at Ilford Town Hall on Friday 8th April, 6.00pm, at Ilford Town Hall.

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Sham 69 - Angels With Dirty Faces.

Saturday 17th April: A Day of Action

This Saturday will be a major Day of Action in East London. A protest march aiming to save King George Hospital will leave Little Heath Green on Barley Lane in Redbridge at 1.15pm to arrive at Ilford Town Centre at 2.15 for an open air rally outside the Town Hall for speakers to explain why the proposals to close King George Hospital A&E and over 400 beds should not go ahead.

Also, the Hope not Hate campaign day happening on Saturday 17th April is their final campaign day aiming at stopping the BNP in Barking and Dagenham. The election is a mere 3 weeks away and as many volunteers as possible are needed to help deliver the latest Hope not Hate newspaper to every household in the Borough. With 400 volunteers they may be able to get a newspaper to every household in the borough on Saturday. This campaign day follows last Sunday's Gospel Concert which encouraged church members to take part in the campaign day.

The campaign day starts from 10:30am at; Hope not Hate HQ, 3rd Floor, Transport House, 50-52 New Road, Dagenham RM9 6YS. Lunch will be provided as well as entertainment. The nearest station is Dagenham Heathway, take bus 173/174/175 toward Ford Works and alight at 'nutbrowne road' bus stop. They are two mins walk from there.

If you do not live in the borough please sign up to the Hope not Hate campaign online and find out where your nearest free Hope not Hate coach meeting point is for pick up and drop off - http://action.hopenothate.org.uk/page/event/search_simple.

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Extreme - Oh Father/Peacemaker Die.

Save King George Hospital

Today I spoke at a public meeting to say no to the threat to close King George Hospital A&E and over 400 beds. The other speakers included: Chris Carter (Ilford Recorder Editor); Mike Gapes MP; Fr. Benjamin Rutt-Field; Lee Scott MP; Cllr Ralph Scott; and a range of other local faith leaders.

In my speech I said the following:

It is great news and testament to the community campaign that you have carried out that, as announced by Mike O'Brien, the Minister of State for Health Services, the Government have referred the decision about whether or not A&E and maternity services at King George’s Hospital will close to an independent reconfiguration panel for review. I echo what John Lister, of the pressure group Health Emergency is quoted in this week’s Ilford Recorder as saying, "It shows that if you don't clamour, your hospital will close down.”

But, he goes on to say that, “the fight is still on and campaigners need to keep the pressure on.” With that in mind I would to highlight something Mike O’Brien said last Wednesday which gives cause for concern and an indication of how the campaign may need to be taken forward.

Mike O’Brien was quoted in the Recorder as saying: "I’ve been to see the services for myself and it’s clear that there’s a great deal of affection for this hospital.” That sounds positive and straightforward but the language politician’s use is always significant and the subtext to this statement is that local campaigning is based on sentiment not facts. Local ‘affection’ for a place is not a substantial argument for keeping it open and the key to keeping these services at King Georges will not be sentimental affection but facts about the best way of delivering healthcare in this area. So the perception that this campaign is based on sentiment rather than facts is one that will need to be challenged and changed in the next phase of the campaign.

One aspect of the health services’ plan to challenge is their intention to engage in social engineering. Their plans to close A&E at King Georges are based on their judgement that 75% of those people currently treated at A&E can be treated as effectively elsewhere. So their plans, as they have set them out, rely completely on that significant group of A&E users changing their behaviour and using either the new Urgent Care Centre or their GP. We all know what would actually happen if those plans became reality, even if the planners refuse to acknowledge it, less A&E with similar numbers of people trying to access those reduced services. So, the campaign focus needs to be on the ways in which the arrangements for change don’t stack up.

As a local faith leader, I see on each visit to parishioners in hospital the value of locally provided healthcare and, with those of my parishioners who have to go further afield to receive the treatment they require, also see the pressure that longer and more difficult journeys place on family and friends as they seek to supplement the care provided by the health services.

Centralising emergency services may save the NHS money but only at a real cost to all its users who then have to travel out of their local area to access these vital services. That cost won’t appear on any NHS balance sheet, nor, I imagine will the significant cost of making these changes be offset against the savings made. We all know, from the recent Audit Office figures on Government Department reorganisations, how much change can cost significantly reducing the savings achieved.

For all these reasons, and more, it is vital that this campaign keeps the pressure on until A&E and maternity at King Georges are saved.

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Writz - Night Nurse.