PPlog

A trailblazing step in service user involvement took place In the summer of last year. The Norfolk Coalition of Disabled People (NCODP) was commissioned to train and operate a system using service users to monitor the implementation of the Personalisation Agenda for Norfolk County Council Adult Social Care, NHS Norfolk (PCT) and NHS Gt Yarmouth and Waveney (PCT). However, embedded in a brilliant strategy was an anachronistic abomination. This was my e mail to Mark Harrison, CeO of the Norfolk Coalition of Disabled People and Chair of the Joint Strategic Board running the Strategy for monitoring Personalisation in the county of Norfolk. As a member of NCODP I'm participating in the training for monitoring the joint personalisation agenda and I'm excited at being able to take part in this project which I know, from involvement in national activities around personalisation, is one of the schemes leading the way. But, as a mental health survivor as well as a physical...

PPlog entries have been sparse recently because writing through the pain of compressed nerves and the frustration of immobility isn’t easy. The sequel to my entry called Circuitous Circus last October is that The James Paget Hospital Trust consultants were wrong to not listen to what I was saying - to make me chase my tail over seven months in various untreated degrees of pain - and to eventually dismiss it all as a common process of natural deterioration no different to thousands of others. The sequel is that I am now wheelchair bound, unable to leave the house under my own power, in constant severe pain and a burden to my wife whose life has dramatically taken on a different dimension. Damn you NHS - Damn you !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Goodbye Michael Foot a very rarely found phenomenon in our society: a scrupulously honest and erudite politician it is my privilege to have lived alongside you.

Here is my letter to Phil Hope, Minister of Health, in response to the Livability findings this week about the lack of progress in local authorities and the NHS developing and implementing the Personalisation Agenda. The Livability report says: Chief executive of Livability Mary Bishop said: "The results of our research are extremely worrying. Personal Budgets have the potential to transform the lives of disabled people by giving them choice and control and yet awareness of them is woefully inadequate. With just over a year to go until they are rolled out across England, it is clear that central and local government are ill prepared. Hello Mr Hope. You should know that Norfolk is a little ahead with its Personalisation Agenda and Preparation for Personal Budgets. There is a joint strategy for disabled service users to build and monitor the delivery. This strategy has fully involved service users and the Norfolk Coalition of Disabled People led the joint board in planning and draw...

There is a change which measures 8 on the Richter scale coming to Health Services and Adult Social Care. Heading this change is the Care Quality Commission which has drawn up stringent standards and values that every health trust, local authority adult social services and commissioned independent or private organisations will have to meet to register their practice. Those not registered will NOT be able to practice. The Date for this change is just under ten weeks away - on April 1st 2010 . The Care Quality Commission says: “The regulation of health and adult social care is changing. Subject to legislation, all health and adult social care providers who provide regulated activities will be required by law to be registered with the Care Quality Commission. The new registration system comes into force on 1 April 2010 for NHS trusts (including primary care trusts as providers) and on 1 October 2010 for adult social care and independent healthcare providers (registration under the ...

This is to update my blog of 6th September 2009: “I'd like to offer you my time, skills, experience and goodwill free of charge.“ and to record some corrections the Care Quality Commission (CQC) have offered. I said in the Sept 6th entry: ” The first problem is that this is an indirect process: you have to do it through one of their selected charitable agencies...through seven pages of their website, and downloading a list of their selections.“ I am revisiting this because I recently had a telephone conversation with the CQC’s lead on their ”Experts by Experience“ project, Mandy Moore. Mandy told me my experience of being presented with a lengthy application form inappropriate for volunteering, was misleading as ”most Experts by Experience are employed and paid by the “...national and local organisations who recruit, train and support our expert by experience on our behalf to take part in our inspection work.” and the...

I'm a bit reluctant to do this. Somehow, using my own experiences as evidence brings with it a tinge of embarrassment and a feeling that it maybe is not sufficiently objective. However, as evidence of NHS Norfolk's poor commitment to personalisation and lousy professional standards by the commissioned body (Norfolk Community Health and Care) it's too stark to go unsaid. Copies of this entry will go to NHS Norfolk, Norfolk Community Health and Care, Our Norfolk Coalition of Disabled People Joint Strategy Programme, and the Care Quality Commission. The sequel to my PPlog post of 11th October , "Circuitous Circus " is I eventually got to see the alternative consultant on 24th November. That consultant was Dr Willie Nottcutt, a leader in the field of pain management and someone for whom I had full respect, having known his work for many years. At the end of an hour and a half's frank discussion, he told me the kind of disorder I had was the product of natural ...