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Regional contradictions

The following is an extract from a Department of Health letter dated 29th January, 2009 to all trusts and strategic health authorities throughout England
“Responding to what really matters to patients - support for embedding involvement and engagement. 
Over the last few years, the NHS has made progress towards fully engaging people in the design and delivery of services. All major policy drivers, including the High Quality Care for All, World Class Commissioning, Local Involvement Networks (LINks) and the Draft NHS Constitution, make it clear that we must carry on embedding this good practice in all that we do.
The Department is currently considering how best to support the NHS and support key partners and stakeholders so that it can facilitate true patient and public empowerment across all health services”
However, as we know, in Wales “patient and public empowerment” has been retained in the form of the old Community Health Councils which, in England were replaced by Patient and Public Involvement Forums in 2003 with the latter being replaced by Local Involvement Forums (LINks) in 2008.
But while the Department of Health appears to be promoting and expanding “patient and public empowerment” in England, Wales seems to be working to reduce and diminish it. This is their latest:
Proposals on the future of Community Health Councils in Wales
Dissolution of the existing 19 Community Health Councils (CHCs) in Wales;
Functions, structure and membership of the seven new CHCs; (Welsh Assembly Government statement 2009)
This means they are going to do away with any local patient and public involvement, moving the councils further away from any possibility of ordinary people who know from direct experience the strengths and weaknesses of their health and social services taking part in those councils. More particularly the proposals will effectively prevent (by moving to fewer councils further away) disabled and ‘hard to reach’ people from involvement.
What happens with cross-border services and joint working will be something of a conundrum.

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