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Get off your couches

Now 2009 is less than 40,000,000,000 light years away - here anyway - real activities in LINks is accelerating and I want to, once again, shout from the mountain tops (difficult in Norfolk!) that the system offers wonderful opportunities for service users and carers of all flavours and breeds - opportunities we have been fighting for for the last thirty to forty years.

Real service user and carer involvement and influence is now making a tangible difference and in the latter part of 2008, facilities have begun to mushroom around the concept of the user as an equal expert in her/his own right in heath and social care.Tokenism still exists: take for example the several websites set up by the "NHS Centre for Involvement" run entirely by civil servants, resistant to any suggestion of real service user and carer involvement and operating on vacuous government rhetoric.

On the other hand the National Association of LINks Members (NALM), a body set up by those previously involved in Patient and Public Involvement Forums, independent of political influence and sceptical of the way Government had run PPI via the QUANGO Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health (CPPIH), is doing great things. Interesting that many of the civil servants who inhabited CPPIH are now working at the NHS Centre for Involvement (NCI). NALM said in its recent newsletter it is in regular discussion with the CeO of NCI but they are unable to get any co-operation. In contrast, NALM has very positive discussions and partnership arrangements with the independent www.patientopinion.org.uk (very well worth looking up) and www.nationalvoices.org.uk - the new umbrella of organisations representing service user involvement - used to be the Long Term Conditions Alliance). The latter also has a membership list page (organisations only - no individual membership) which is very useful as a reference tool.

So, you lot. Get out and join your LINks - you can make a vast difference to service delivery, deficiences in service, inadequate practice and malpractice - IN THE NHS AND IN SOCIAL SERVICES. And an important point: It is also your chance to monitor and influence the operation of CHILD PROTECTION services.

The concerted nation voice we have been battling for over forty years is here. USE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!

Comments

That's not my name! said…
Much as I like you Mike

On this occasion, I will pass ...but not pass Go and Join A Link and I don't care if I don't get the £200 quid either.
5 January 2009 at 22:13
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