Tag Archives: nhs

Whittington Hospital

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Surgery at Wood Green library – from which I exit in order to run to the Civic Centre where the Public Inquiry on the Hornsey concrete factory plan is being held to make my statement. I do my best to make the Inspector understand that he should uphold the decision of Haringey Council to refuse the scheme. Fingers crossed. I rush back to my surgery and continue to try and help everyone who comes to me. Surgery is pretty draining. So much desperation, need and unhappiness. One man sobbed today.

Lynne Featherstone visiting Learn Direct centre, HaringeyI then go to meet the Learn Direct team and HALS – so that I can know more about what is available to skill people up so that they can engage better in work or whatever. Very impressed with the whole team. Clearly Learn Direct is helping raise education and skills for those people who, for whatever reason, missed out on some of their education.

And then last port of call of the day is a visit to meet the Chief Executive of the Whittington Hospital. Ostensibly it is a meeting so that we can meet. But I suspect from the conversation that he had been surprised by the coverage of particular complaints with regard to care that elderly people received when they were at the Whittington. I had written to the Secretary for Health describing the cases as a way of suggesting to the Minister that there needs to be some attention paid to whether these are infrequent occurrences or whether there is nationally any need to review training etc.

I found the Chief Exec extremely easy to get on with and look forward to working closely on health and public health issues. From what we discussed, the Whittington is actually doing pretty well. Forgetting the stars (not my favourite system) they are hitting their targets, they were not one of the hospitals on the recent expose of dirty hospitals and it looks like they will have a balanced budget this year. But even more importantly, I felt that Mr Sloman really cared about delivering good services at the hospital. And in the end – that is what counts the most. It is always down to people and leadership. We agree to meet quarterly to keep updated on all the key issues and hope to be able to attend the opening of the new building in the spring.

Sunday

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We had a Lib Dem away day – not very far away as it was in Highgate! I spent the morning with the key activists who will take on the council elections in May. We have high hopes of winning enough seats to take control. But I’m not going to say what we discussed for obvious reasons!

Ended up Sunday night at the Whittington with a chest infection. Camidoc is a brilliant service (that’s why we need our local one back at the old Hornsey Hospital site when it is finally redeveloped). Picked up prescriptions from chemist and went home finally about 10pm feeling pretty rough.

Westminster Hall debates

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I rush to Westminster Hall – where mini-versions of Parliamentary debates take place. Members (i.e. MPs) put in for a particular debate – and it is a lottery as to whether you get one. I keep putting in – but haven’t been pulled out of the hat as yet.

The MP who does succeed in getting the debate puts the case for whatever subject they have chosen, other Members can choose to come and speak and will be called if there is time, and then there is a winding up by each of the opposition parties and the Government Minister then has to respond to all the point made. So it can be a useful exercise to put a case and have a Minster address the issues raised by the debate. There is no vote.

So – I rush today to watch one as tomorrow and Thursday I am on the front bench for the Lib Dems in Westminster Hall and want to see one in action before I have to do it myself. However, the Tory who has the debate is not there at the time of starting and the Chair immediately suspends proceedings. The debate falls. As I exit the room, a very puffed Tory rushes past – but too late. Poor guy.

Later on I go to an all-party meeting on prison reform where (Home Secretary) Charles Clarke is putting forward, as far as I can see, LibDem policy on prison reform – rehabilitation, education, community sentences. How come when we have this in our manifesto the buggers just chant ‘soft on crime’? It is so stupid ‘cos everyone knows that prison isn’t working in terms of the prison – 60% of prisoners re-offend within two years and the huge growth in the prison population costs a fortune – money that therefore isn’t available to be spent on other things like crime prevention or the NHS. Anyway – always nice (if galling) to be able to say ‘I told you so’.

North London Hospice

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I hold my surgery in Wood Green, but have decided that the vote on climate change (a private members’ bill) is so important that I will have to leave surgery to make sure that the Bill goes through to its next stage. The show of numbers (mainly on the Lib Dem benches) meant that the Tories decided not to divide the House and no vote was actually taken because it was quite obvious that it would pass anyway. What the Tories did that was totally unacceptable in my view was talk out the second bill on environmentally friendly energy policies. Defeating something where there’s a debate and the vote goes that way is one thing – but just talking and talking until something has to fall when time runs out is something else. I think the practise should be banned as it subverts the course of democracy. I know it’s gone on since the beginning of time – but it is wrong!

Then I rush back to go to the North London Hospice. What a fantastic organisation delivering a fantastic service. The NHS could truly take some lessons. The big issue for them, needless to say, is funding. So much still comes from donations. It provides a service that the state appears not to bother with most of the time and when it does it is crude, nasty and undignified. Should this really be left to donations to sort out? I left the Hospice really heartened because the people involved are so committed, so dedicated and the service so good – that it gave me hope!

Problems at the Whittington

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Surgery all morning meeting residents who wanted to raise issues – with a pause for a live radio interview right in the middle of it. Our Shadow Home Secretary Mark Oaten was otherwise engaged – so I had to just take it there and then. ASBOs – need I say more. I will. There has been something like an 86% increase this year – and still it doesn’t (according to the radio presenter) stop or deter anti-social behaviour. Shock! Horror! Of course it doesn’t. Banning people from doing anything rarely works in any real or sustained way. Tougher would be to really tackle those youngsters as with Acceptable Behaviour Contracts (pioneered in Liberal Democrat run Islington with the Met) where parents, the young person, teachers, police, local authority, social workers, or whoever is necessary sit down and work out an agreed program – and come back to it – week after week after week. Sustained interest and effective mentoring works – but it is truly tough liberalism.

Then the presenter meanders into the territory of whether policy should support marriage and the nuclear family (probably following on from the Tory leadership debate last night). I say that’s a difficult one! The world has changed – and I don’t know that you can change it back even if the ‘wholeness’ of a two-parent family unit were proven to be ideal. So I opt for the important thing – which is loving and caring for your children whatever the surrounding construct.

Afterwards surgery I make a home visit to an elederly lady who wants to talk to me about people not listening to old people and trying to get rid of them. Her son is there when I arrive – and I sit down and have about an hour’s chat with her. She highlights the recent treatment of herself at the Whittington – and cites the dismissive way in which old people can be treated and worse. I totally agree. I have some terrible tales from the Whittington – and I have been there and met with the Chair and the issues I raise have been batted away on the whole by generally suggesting that the complainant is a difficult person etc.

I will regale you with one tale from my own experience to exemplify what my constituent and I are on about. My daughter was admitted to the Whittington overnight a while back. From A & E she was put in the womens’ geriatric ward as the only place with space. She told me this tale. During the night an old lady in a bed not far away was calling for the nurse for quite a while. The nurse kept walking past and not responding to the woman. Eventually, my daughter got up and went over to the woman to see what was wrong. She wanted to go to the toilet. My daughter went and found a nurse and told her that the old lady in the bed needed to go to the loo. The nurse basically said that the woman was a nuisance, always wanting something and she would just have to wait. The old woman wet herself in the end.

It is a terrible tale – but I have other similar ones. When I have presented them to the Whittington – as I say – they are batted away one way or the other. We are currently waiting for an apology for the way another of my constituents was treated and have been told one will be forthcoming. We will see on that one. I appreciate that nurses do a great job under incredible strain and stress. Nursing care – not the clinical medical side – but the caring, motherly side of nursing – is what is needed as well as the clinical and medical excellence. How to make time for nurses to give that care alongside the tablets is where I want to head. It can only be (or I hope that the reason is) that nurses have no time for any real degree of that side of nursing anymore. And my constituent old lady was voicing just that need, particularly from an older person’s perspective of being treated so poorly. I will continue to work on this issue.

Then back to my constituency office to meet with a foster care expert who is concerned over the gap in the care that is given to those leaving foster care. Government is meant to be funding people to do this job. But the system isn’t working as it should – another one to pursue.

Then last job of the day is my quarterly meeting with the Labour Leader of Haringey Council, Charles Adje. We run through an agenda of local issues and council business and whilst there are no major issues on the table, it is a useful regular meeting – as we are all working for Haringey’s benefit – whatever our political persuasion and whatever our different roles.

Public transport in Hornsey

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Morning in surgery as usual. And then go to meet the temporary Chief Exec of Haringey Council about two families waiting to be re-housed. Both these families have a disabled child and both are desperate to be re-housed because – as the children have grown up (one is now 11) – carrying them up narrow stairs has become impossible. Have called this meeting because have simply been getting the run-around from Haringey Council. And I simply don’t believe that no three-bedroom house has come up in the five years that family one has been waiting!

The Chief Exec is there with the officer in charge of allocations. Clearly on the defensive – but also didn’t get all their facts rights. The contents per se of the meeting has to remain confidential at this moment in time – but both families are now well and truly at the top of the agenda. Whilst they have totally different situations – at least the publicity and effort will hopefully sort this out soon.

What I was under-whelmed with was the idea that Haringey can try to so easily wash its hands of a family. It is disgusting. Furthermore, I don’t believe no houses have come up in the last five years that could not, with a bit of work, have been made suitable. The policy of having to wait for an adapted house in every case is ridiculous if you are not creating adequate facilities for those with disabilities in the first place.

I have never managed to get ‘evidence’ as yet as to why some people get allocated what they want and others wait years in seemingly equivalent situations. If anyone can ever bring me evidence rather than rumour that some people are getting round the system, I would be very happy to take it further – but without actual evidence it is impossible to prove.

Then off I go to see the last part of a Mobility Exercise Programme in Hornsey where some of our older citizens are being taught exercises in a class which keeps them mobile and probably saves the NHS a fortune in medical bills. It is just wonderful.

I have been brought in by the teacher for two reasons. One: the funding has been cut and is running out – so a weekly class is now once every two weeks and floundering. And two: there is no transport in the whole area in and around the Campsbourne Estate – so people are having trouble getting to the class. The council officers are there – and having heard I was coming had already broached the subject with Transport for London. I feel a hopper bus coming on. Similar situations in the east of the borough I understand have hopper buses to help those on the estate get to the shops and around and about – so we want the same!

And then – it’s home – and a weekend off. I know – shock horror. I have struck through one weekend per month in my diary – otherwise there is no time off. One danger though – my younger daughter will make me go shopping with her. It’s cheaper to just keep working!

Mobile phone masts

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Early meeting with Peter Wingate-Saul, the National Community Relations Manager at Crown Castle UK – who are a company who find sites for mobile telephone masts. He has asked for a meeting as he wants to put the mobile phone industry’s side of the case regarding health risks and how guidelines and government views are formed, on what authority and on whose advice.

I am pleased, as always, to hear all sides and have some sympathy in terms of the case he made for not making legislation based on people’s fears but rather making it based on substantive points. However, I am still not convinced that we can be sure there is no harm whatsoever from mobile phone masts or phones.

I am firm in my belief that proper planning processes should be applied to all masts and that until there is more information – preferable more definitive information – we would be wise to continue to be cautious on behalf of our youngest and most vulnerable citizens. In fact I have backed an Early Day Motion in this regard this week. (There’s ane explanation of what EDMs are on the Parliament website).

One of the women in one of the local campaigns believes her child is already suffering radiation sickness and has had a test done on the roots of his hair which she says show positive. I have asked if there is an NHS hospital that is carrying out these tests – as it may be important to try and get a wider health survey of such evidence properly tested.

Whittington Hospital

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You can tell there is an election in the offing as the level of abuse mixed with panic from the Labour benches rises to even more unedifying heights than usual at tonight’s full council meeting.

Particularly irksome to them, apparently, was our motion suggesting that the PFI deal with Jarvis for the Whittington Hospital was a problem. It’s a bad tradition of Haringey Council to let Labour submit “delete all and replace with…” amendments – despite what the rules say. Needless to say, that’s just what Labour submits this time too.

The snow is coming down thick and fast as we leave Haringey Civic Centre – so instead of a debriefing at a public house – we all head straight off home.

Travel for NHS staff

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I met the travel-planning team at the Whittington Hospital, North London.

I am very keen on travel planning and Indi marketing. This is basically looking at an individual’s life and supplying them with a tailor-made plan of how to get around using mostly public transport.

This has had stunning results elsewhere in the world and I was instrumental in getting TfL to pilot it in this country. I’m very keen to encourage corporate bodies who are willing to take travel planning seriously.

Plus I knew nothing about the allegations about a senior royal – but all day various news media have now made me aware that the person involved is Prince Charles – and his staff say he is innocent. That has just left me wondering what he got up to! It may be common currency in the media and amongst the cognoscenti – but clearly I’ve been out the loop!

How to sex up travel planning

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Sexing up travel planning – that’s my challenge. Not easy! But I am 100% convinced that individual travel planning (which I will explain in a moment) is as likely to reduce congestion as congestion charging, and without spending a penny on new infrastructure.

I get really annoyed that travel planning, car sharing, car clubs, cycling etc get termed ‘soft measures’. I reckon that’s a put down – as though they aren’t as important as the big transport infrastructure projects. Forgive the discrimination – but the boys like the big toys – the Crossrails or the macho game of ‘who’s got the biggest airport’.

And the so called ‘soft measures’ get short shrift on funding. Yet individualized Travel Planning in a project in Perth, Australia reduced congestion by 14% – nearly as much as the Mayor’s congestion charging scheme – but without a penny having to be spent on infrastructure.

Travel planning is basically taking a group of people, finding out about their lives and then giving them individualized travel plans helping them to use public transport where before they would have used their cars.

You see – it’s just not sexy! BUT that sort of cultural or social shift is probably more sustainable and more effective than the big transport projects. Of course, it’s not either or – both are needed.

I forced (too long a story) Transport for London into running four pilots of the ‘Perth’ scheme in London. The reports on how successful or otherwise they have been should be out in a short while.

I was opening speaker at the NHS Travel Plan Forum this morning. This brings travel planning to institutions and corporations and the NHS is one of the biggest employers in London. Transport for London are working with the NHS across 18 major hospital sites in London to begin to try and plan travel for up to 40,000 staff – who face the added challenge of 24 hour working patterns. It was the first meeting of the forum and I think it’s going to be the way to go for corporate or institutional responsibility in the capital.