Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Mental Health : Breaking Health Illusions


Karl Linx's Wisdom ?

The Dept of Health and Govt approved back door fox-trot on patient and public involvement (PPI) has resulted in a dubious and sloppy new set up in Local Involvement Networks (LINks) across the UK .

So far we are aware that Statutory Overview Scrutiny Committee's (headed by local councils to oversee changes in Health Services ) are also slopping around in the LINks splashing too as some kind of Linky-kinky-form tries to swim here and there - added to that the Foundation Trust 's have become mysterious and poor at producing a view in onto them . We are not sure what the LINks splashing form is though because occasionally a watery arm is seen then a brick around the neck of something, then different conflicting cries and maybe a screeching cat in a sack ...

Hang on maybe its a drowning we are witnessing !
We THEREFORE give thanks to our readers for being there because YOU MADE US THINK and decode the new DOH pushed and distorted symbolism ....Or is that embolism we mean ? Maybe they will use formaldehyde soon and PPI as an ethos will be well and truly pickled as well as trickled ...?

Ex Commission for Patient and Public Involvement Types are turning up at the National Centre For Involvement (funded by the Dept of Health ) apparently and we see they lately want someone with press experience . Ahhh the image game ...The love of arts everyone has would be amazing were it put to the use of integrity ..

They want a "Director of Communications NCI" for £19645 - 22765

"Job Purpose :

To provide professional communication/ press office function, administration support as well as provide advice and information on the NHS Centre for Involvement, its partners and available resources to contacts from patients, the public, patient and public involvement professionals, voluntary organisations, working with both internal and external customers"

The new year is a-coming but accountability in health that might lead to better reform is unlikely we think, not least because all across the UK we are seeing a trend of LINks having a kind of authority-core which will dominate its working groups - you know the people that have to see and experience the health and social care bullshit going on . We have seen this trend in places like Bristol and Birmingham and we really wonder what Hampshire is doing too - its almost as if the PCT and Council there had it all arranged behind the scenes and stitched up appearences of a few concerned citzens with a dominant shadow of NHS/Council bureau-fear behind them ready to run and control the agenda. Without sure footed independence LINks will be slurried into partnership sliding about ...

We think LINks is doomed to failure because its already being observed to be internally centralising and creates a pyramid core group tendency who are not necessarily patients and the public with that hard edge of patient and public experience gained by some in the in the PPI forums . We are also in possession of evidence that shows some alarming views that LINks appears to attract those who are authoritarian in their approach .. Oooo lets see more of you lot - bring it on ... We is the Multi Media cheeksters and do not expect any mercy from us .. Satire is our game and we will give you fame ...

Instead of using the strategic power of some wisdom gained by those lingering on from PPI days - LINKs here and there are already behaving like mini versions of a mis-shapen political puppet of the Dept of Health . It seems the DOH puppetmasters have done well .. What power LINks have at the moment is dubious. Certainly no greater that the Freedom of Information Act and worryingly some have no indemnity (as PPI Fora previously had from the Secretary of State) . Yet the confidence in them is not great either since the Govt has trashed and bashed the sharp little teeth that some previous PPI Fora were developing and that is making ex-health-activists give their own opinions in the UK amongst their peers ..

So what is more positively going for the UK Government is the current trend in widened opportunities for administrators and the players it backs through the NHS link in the bureau "partnership game" ... Yet this is now in the uncertain context of an altering economy with no bullshit financial sector to keep any surpluses acruing ...

Frankly we have never agreed with the idea of User-Voice in any part of medicine without USER CHOICE being a parallel purchasing power more immediately owned by the patient and we wonder what would have happened if all the expensive bureaucracy around PPI and so on had been converted into straight forward personal health budgets locally driven in truer linked partnership with GP's .. The real LINK has been denied we think . Its about de-bureacratisation of health , Patient Choice, and losing the false illusions that are chaining patients lives ......

But watch the Govt carefully for how it has undermined the local connection between GP and patient claiming better health accountability - new forms of super practices (led by PCT planning) are springing up here and there but they are not local enough and are not seriously humanly friendly enough....The NHS was at its best with the GP connection and long term relationship - System driven analytics which is undermining human connections in health has to stop because its driving money up its own bureaucratic performance loving arse and undermining the human connection and real patient-link in health.

We advise - Watch the Trusts and PCT's - that is where the chaos and the dirt under the carpet is . They know it and they are paranoid about being found out which makes LINKs all the more designed and influenced to be soapier .... Moral sliding is the greatest skill you will ever see in the NHS ....



See the debate below about GP's Opposition To Polyclinics





From June 2008 Parliament Debate Re : Local Scrutiny


Tony Baldry (Banbury, Conservative) | Hansard source | Watch this

My hon. Friend has said that the situation is absurd, but there is a further bizarre twist. Is he aware that the Darzi clinics will not be subject to monitoring by health overview and scrutiny committees? The Government are introducing a two-tier NHS: parts of the NHS are subject to scrutiny by health overview and scrutiny committees, whereas independent treatment centres and Darzi clinics will not be subject to scrutiny and monitoring by health overview and scrutiny committees, which seems fundamentally wrong.

I agree with my hon. Friend. Pulse recently looked at the proposals in PCTs, and only a tiny proportion of those that it looked at had been subject to even a semblance of a public consultation. The reason is precisely the same as the reason that my hon. Friend gave: the Government are determined that the proposal should not be subject to scrutiny. Why? Because it will not stand up to that scrutiny, it is not locally determined, it does not arise out of the needs and circumstances of the area and, on the quality of care that will be provided, it is not even evidence-based.



LINKS :


Polyclinics BBC

Hansard GP Links Undermined

Theyworkforyou . com Polyclinics Debate

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