My local Accident & Emergency department is rammed with suicidal residents going to A and E as they have no where else to go

This was posted today on Facebook by Paula Peters.

“I want to share a couple of experiences of the mental health services cuts with you today.

I have a local CMHT ( community mental health team) in south London, we had three CMHTs it went down to two, and the discharge rate in the last four years is massive. You will only stay under a CMHT if you are on Clozapine medication, other than that you are back to primary care and GP. You can imagine for clients, as the team calls them, what that does for them with no treatment, no support and no supporting medical evidence needed for (disability benefits) ESA and PIP and support for UC (universal Credit) Claims. My local A and E is rammed with suicidal residents going to A and E as they have no where to go, and local counseling services have an 18 month and longer wait for therapy. The average wait to see a GP in some practices in Bromley is now 8 weeks and climbing. as not only is there a shortage of consultant psychiatrists, but, there is a shortage of GPs.

Just recently, i saw my local consultant psychiatrist who I have not seen since October 2016. I have not been able to see them because they have been on sick leave and there was no one else to help out. I found out when I saw them, what happened.

They now manage two teams within the CMHT, psychosis and adapt. They have 5,000 clients to deal with, appointments and paperwork. That does not include dr training, management of staff, in patient work on the local unit and any other work required of them.

At Christmas they were so tired and wrung out that they caught their bag in a slam door in the office that severely broke their wrist. They did not know the wrist was broken at the time and they went back to the desk they share with 6 other members of staff and wrote up 7 people’s medical notes as they were behind on doing so.
They ended up in A and E for 9 hours and a plaster cast on and off for the next 8 months after a series of operations. They were so stressed when I saw them they were at breaking point.

All they talked about was targets targets targets. Many of them unachieveable and they pointed out the three people going around with clipboards harassing staff. Apparently the next round of redundancies were due. They said they are not sleeping, scared and worried about their jobs and worried about clients who are not getting the support they need.

They cant send anyone for treatment at the local inpatient unit because well there are no beds for 300 miles there are nursing shortages and dr shortages.

When I saw my consultant they said the suicide rate and self harm rate is rocketing due to lack of support. They are angry at the government for the lack of service support and further cuts to come.

As for me, well i am on my third support worker in 9 months. They keep leaving. They are so stressed and depressed am surprised they don’t label the place the titanic!

The support worker who i will only see for six sessions is not sure when she will see me next as she has 1200 clients to see. She is not sure if she is sticking around either. As i need continuity of care with GP i cant get a GP appointment right now she is off sick and they are not sure when she is coming back and the other GP has no openings on the appointment book until December, they can’t get a locum as there is a shortage of those and many of them are engaged elsewhere in the coming weeks.

The cuts to mental health services are claiming lives, putting lives at risk, not just the patients, but the staff too. Patients are being denied the support they so need to get through each day. There is no support available and no good going to local MINDs as it is all work is a health outcome and jog your way through depression which is not helpful to anyone with a severe mental health condition and in serious mental distress.
The person needs support and compassion not to be told they are a burden, told its all their fault and get back to work as soon as possible.

Before you donate to a local mental health charity check first they are not involved in the health and work programme, they do not employ staff and zero hours contracts and they are not bidding for local council and DWP contracts. If they are avoid them, because they are not working for claimants in mental distress but against them. National Mind being paramount to working and colluding with national government and DWP on health and work programme contracts who think if we go out jogging we can jog our way through depression and anxiety and if we think ourselves better, we will be better.

Here is my response to MIND – jog on what utter bollox! If i could jog my way out of depression, and having RA and fibro and HMS its out of the question I would have done it by now and think better and everything will be well?

No, with a tory government and national charities working with them and they persecuting people in mental distress as well as disabled people everything is not well. Its a bloody mess and people are taking their own lives.

We need to talk about this every day, not one day a year because the cuts are going to get worse and with the UC roll out accelerating the deaths and poverty will go through the roof too.

……………………………………………………………

this was posted in the comments:

“I know 3 people who rang crisis team for help as they felt suicidal, one was recently an inpatient after an attempt 2 had both made attempts in the past year, they were all told they would only get help if they attempted suicide. Very sadly, one did and is no longer with us 😦 Those of us who are working in mental health are doing so with not enough resources and far too little time and many of us are becoming unwell too”

If you are having dark thoughts yourself please contact the Samaritans on their free number (free for mobiles, too) 116 123.

For the third time since 2010, the government is planning to sell off NHS Professionals, the NHS in-house temporary staffing agency.

The most foolish NHS privatisation yet?

If private staffing agency fees are damaging the NHS so much, why on earth does the government keep trying to privatise the in-house agency set up to help the NHS avoid the problem?

For the third time since 2010, the government is planning to sell off NHS Professionals, the NHS in-house temporary staffing agency. This is the latest in a long series of gradual and covert moves to privatise our NHS. The obscurity in the privatisation process is no surprise. 84% of us want a publicly owned NHS. Those who want to place it in private hands know they can’t do so transparently.

Plans for the sale of NHS Professionals in 2010 and 2014 were shelved. This time around, the government’s schedule has been disrupted by the election, and now Eleanor Smith, Labour MP for Wolverhampton South West, has tabled an Early Day Motion (number 152) for concerned MPs to sign, calling on the government to halt the sell-off, co sponsored by the SNP health spokeswoman Dr Philippa Whitford MP and Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas MP.

Lucas has also tabled written questions to the Department of Health in an effort to find out more information about the sale process. Through parliamentary pressure and a wider campaign by We Own It, this move to privatise yet another part of the NHS can be stopped.

read more here: https://www.opendemocracy.net/ournhs/michael-thorne/most-foolish-nhs-privatisation-yet

My child is in pain, bleeding and she is ignored because we are poor. We have no NHS to go to anymore.

From my Facebook feed.

My kids have a variety of ongoing health needs. Three days before a consultant appointment we waited 6 months for, we received this letter. I called the hospital who refused to speak to me. They just told me to speak to Virgin Care. You can’t speak to Virgin Care. Only leave voice mails to which they don’t respond. I wrote a letter to which they responded. I got an initial assessment appointment and again have heard nothing since. I still haven’t seen a consultant. In all since seeking a referral from my GP it has been 18 months. This is the new Tory Health care. And it is targeted at your children. If you want this for your babies. Carry on and vote Tory in June. My child is in pain, bleeding and she is ignored because we are poor. We have no NHS to go to anymore. This is your UK if you want to save our NHS. Do something.

 

How the vulnerable get get ‘managed’ off hospital waiting lists

…..Cutting services completely always generates unfavourable headlines, whereas merely making them a little harder to get at is less dramatic

And it doesn’t even have to involve a monetary transaction: there are plenty of more subtle ways to stop those inconvenient patients turning up demanding care. But the trouble is, the people we discourage are not the frivolous, the ‘worried well’, the over-entitled: more often than not, they’re the people who need our care most of all…..

read more from this hospital doctor here: https://www.bma.org.uk/connecting-doctors/b/work/posts/how-the-poor-get-managed-off-waiting-list

NHS spending per person will be cut next year, ministers confirm

The funding constraints come despite the unfolding ‘humanitarian crisis’ in the health service

The Government will cut the National Health Service’s budget per person in real terms next year, ministers have admitted in official figures for the first time.

Numbers released by ministers show NHS England will face a sharp reduction of 0.6 per cent in real terms of per head in the financial year 2018-19.

The numbers corroborate claims by NHS chief Simon Stevens earlier this month that “in 2018-19, real-terms NHS spending per person in England is going to go down”.

The figures also fly in the face of the Government’s public insistence that it is investing more in the health service, with Jeremy Hunt and Theresa May repeating the mantra of an extra £10bn for the NHS.

That claim was debunked by the cross-party Health Committee in the summer, whose chair, Tory MP Sarah Wollaston, said the number was both “incorrect” and “risks giving a false impression that the NHS is awash with cash”.

The Liberal Democrats said the figures show Tory claims of investment were “disingenuous” while Labour said the Government should use the March budget to close the black hole opening up in the health service’s finances.

read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nhs-cuts-spending-policies-theresa-may-jeremy-hunt-tories-labour-lib-dems-a7549686.html?cmpid=facebook-post

Capita putting patient safety at risk, claims BMA

Created: Tuesday, 08 November 2016 19:27 The British Medical Association (BMA) has accused Capita of “putting patient care and safety at risk” by their chaotic handling of patients’ medical records. Capita is a familiar name to claimants because of their contract to carry out personal independence payment assessments in parts of the country. However, another […]

via Capita putting patient safety at risk, claims BMA | BenefitsandWork.co.uk — Britain Isn’t Eating

An NHS hospital is being forced to CROWDFUND to buy beds, thanks to Jeremy Hunt

A London hospital has been forced to crowdfund for vital equipment, including beds, because it cannot afford to invest the money itself.

Begging for beds

The Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital (RNOH) in Stanmore, north-west London, set up the appeal in a bid to raise £400,000 for its spinal injuries unit. The money will go towards six extra beds for the ward, plus new rehabilitation equipment. The RNOH has so far raised £126,000.

The campaign, called the ‘Make it Possible’, is thought to be the first time any NHS hospital has crowdfunded for investment. The project works by allowing patients and families to suggest where money could be spent. Then an appointed committee selects one of the suggestions, and the crowdfunding begins. The spinal injuries unit was the first to be chosen.

Chief Executive of the RNOH, Rob Hurd said that because all the hospital’s money goes into frontline services, very little is left for investment:

We have to be frank, capital is constrained in our NHS and investment in facilities is really difficult at this time. That means the infrastructure that we have got doesn’t get replaced as quickly as we would like. So we need the help of donations and charitable sources to make those additional investments. So we really value those donations because without them we cannot even get started.

Financial uncertainty

The RNOH is one of the country’s flagship orthopedic hospitals, where one in five orthopedic surgeons are trained. But it has fallen into financial difficulties. A proposed renovation of the hospital’s century-old buildings, signed off under Labour in 2010, was delayed by more than five years. The RNOH was initially looking for a private company to fund the work (paywall). But in August the Department of Health (DoH) signed off the first phase of funding. This was only possible because part of the RNOH site was sold off to private developers, and loans were taken out.

The £49.9m awarded to the RNOH will go towards a new inpatient block. The hope is that the DoH will then sign off another £31m for a training centre and biomedical facilities. But, as the crowdfunding project has shown, this only covers the bare essentials. And even on a day-to-day basis the hospital is struggling. It warned in October 2015 that it faced losing £15.2m in income in 2016/17, due to changes in the way the DoH allocates funding.

Read more here: http://www.thecanary.co/2016/10/25/nhs-hospital-forced-crowdfund-buy-beds-thanks-jeremy-hunt/

“I am a midwife and I wish I was dead”: Shocking open letter reveals stress on NHS staff : Daily Record. — DWPExamination.

The midwife author is responsible for 40 women, 80 lives A midwife has penned a shocking open letter revealing the stress of the job, admitting: “I wish I was dead.” The anonymous note, sent to the Liverpool Echo , claims the role is “a black hole destroying my world.” The author talks of the stress […]

via “I am a midwife and I wish I was dead”: Shocking open letter reveals stress on NHS staff : Daily Record. — DWPExamination.

How The DWP Is Drafting In Doctors To Promote Iain Duncan Smith’s Warped Ideology

Are you working hard enough?  Are you sure?  What if you get sick, or have an accident?  Are you prepared to go to work anyway, even if you don’t think it would be good for your health?  What if your doctor and boss agree you could do something other than your usual job instead of malingering at home?  Like making cups of tea all day, or cleaning the bogs, or any form of work your empoyer can dream up to force you not to take time off.  Because that is now the chilling reality as the DWP attempts to inject Iain Duncan Smith’s warped ideology into the NHS

the void

Are you working hard enough?  Are you sure?  What if you get sick, or have an accident?  Are you prepared to go to work anyway, even if you don’t think it would be good for your health?  What if your doctor and boss agree you could do something other than your usual job instead of malingering at home?  Like making cups of tea all day, or cleaning the bogs, or any form of work your empoyer can dream up to force you not to take time off.  Because that is now the chilling reality as the DWP attempts to inject Iain Duncan Smith’s warped ideology into the NHS.

Last week the DWP issued patronising new guidance to GPs on when they should issue a Fit Note.  Doctors are warned of the dangers of ‘worklessness’ and told they must consider “the vital role that work can play in your patient’s health”.

View original post 1,061 more words

NHS facing worst ever winter as Tory hospital cuts could see 35,000 doctors and nurses lose their jobs

Britain’s top union has warned that unless there is an urgent “injection of cash” our hospitals face their worst winter ever

Debt is at an all time high, soaring numbers of the sick are waiting on trolleys in A&E and key targets for treating cancer patients are being woefully missed.

Yet as the NHS deals with the worst “cash crisis in a generation” we can disclose things are only going to get worse.

A Sunday Mirror probe can reveal up to 35,000 doctors and nurses could be AXED to balance the books – which are already £2bn in the red this year.

As trusts plunge into debt private firms are getting increasingly rich – with many now offering huge cash sums of £500 for NHS workers simply to sign up to websites.

And Britain’s top union has warned that unless there is an urgent “injection of cash” our hospitals face their worst winter ever.

read more here: