Activity

At the next Clarity-NSIMHN meeting anyone with points to maķe please listen to the bits about these forums. Then add in the meeting or after if u wish to sign up so we can build a list of what services for vulnerable people have been closed or closing or there are huge cuts in the money given by the Council or possibly the Clinical Commisioning…[Read more]

She will be coming, childcare allowing. Emma, the person in question, happens to be one of my closest friends. 😉

Petition could certainly be one part of effective campaign. Think person would be best visiting monthly meeting or a subgroup meeting to discuss petition wording and establish mutual trust? Would that be possible please Ben?

The letter draft is a good starting point and raises all the points we need to make, let’s see what Lord Cotter makes of it and where he wants to go with it. For me, so long as he makes these points, his press release will be useful:

• All specialist mental health support services in NS have been or are being cut with no consultation or…

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Glenn is an allay….. though may not be relevant to this particular area – he will always do his best so that service users are heard.

I need to reply to Angela asking eg about deteriorating social inclusion and the CCG’s bit of the 1in4 funding and if there is nothing else put in place the increasing social isolation where a support worker who…[Read more]

How about this as an attempt to square the circle in case Lord Cotter turns up at my flat tomorrow? Any changes would be welcome but I may end up opening the file in front of him…..

The cuts to Council and some NHS Clinical Commissioning Group funded services in North Somerset remove vital lifelines from vulnerable people. This has major…[Read more]

All of the services cut were NSC funded services so yes they’re the right people to push. We can’t really do an impact assessment ourselves, it’s a technical document which needs a specialist who has access to the Council figures and numbers. However I think doing a survey about how people feel about the cuts, and how it impacts their life is a…[Read more]

Local authorities have a duty to carry out impact studies on significant changes in their policies and services. They did cursory ones when they proposed the current budget which recommended that in depth impact studies were done before the budget was passed, however they weren’t carried out. I have the original documents on my laptop.

I…[Read more]

Some questions / thoughts / SOS?

I raised the 1in4 closing issue (in the ‘wrong’ place – as there is no ‘right’ place) in a meeting that included Angela Kell lead mental health commissioner in NS part of BNSSG commissioning group. It’s about all NS service users as the services are so thin. So please can we write a joint relatively fast email to…[Read more]

Hi Ben,

Just found a post of yours I missed for an open letter and am very happy with your thoughts. Yes they need sequencing and structuring and they will then make some v strong points.

In particular I missed of yours:

“There was a low level equality impact study done by the council for the social support budget cuts. This study acknowledged…[Read more]

I think people with mental health conditions receiving the drastic and earlier cuts before physical ill health – given something has to go – would be relatively popular amongst reasonably large sections of the WsM community. That’s the issue of parity of esteem…It’s not what particular budget it comes from, it’s that mental health conditions are…[Read more]

It’s not really a matter of what they’re using the money for, they aren’t because there is no money. Local authority funding from central government has been slashed over the past 6 years and local authorities are having to make lots of cuts to balance their books. There is no recouped money. The problem in NS is that vulnerable people are bearing…[Read more]