Is it worth contacting my local MPs?

ethan

ethan

ethan

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I spent last week at the local hospital accompanying my mother who had contracted a RSV/pneumonia type illness. For almost 24 hours she was place in a bed in a corridor with everybody else and everyone including myself was placed in quarantine for five days. The service received from the hospital and staff was fantastic.

What worries me is the amount of people being left in corridors due to the lack of available care and support provision to enable them to go home from the county council. Because I work in care provision I have witnessed situations where the council is deliberately refusing to provide care from local companies with available capacity to take these people because they aren't on the local frameworks. Instead of providing local companies with patients stuck in corridors waiting to go home, they are taking clients who are already receiving care from companies and giving them to competitors effectively putting the companies who were initially providing the care out of business. I'm talking about Staffordshire County Council. It beggers belief that companies such as the one I work for are effectively being prevented by the councils to provide adequate services in this or any kind of a crisis.
 
It’s like that across the country, MPs are the ones that have placed he NHS in this position.

If a number of people contact their MP across the country maybe they will wake up.
 
Are the competitors cheaper? Is that process effectively saving money? And how are the local frameworks decided upon and who might be in a position to modify them? It makes sense to contact your MP if you can make them aware of the problem and of a possible solution, as they should then look into it. Although with the current "crisis" I can't imagine you'd receive much satisfaction as you'll likely get a token reply mentioning how overstressed the service is.
 
Unfortunately this is how EU procurement works. Your County Council will have gone through a procurement exercise to establish a framework and ensure best value. If they step outside of this they risk legal action from the companies on the framework and potentially sanctions for breaching the the regulations.

Every Council that goes out to tender for care at the moment does it knowing full well that they probably don't have the funds available to make the market sustainable. Unfortunately they just aren't funded to be able to provide the level of care that they are statutorily required to. It's not isolated to your area, a vast number of authorities are operating with a pending list of care that they can't currently deliver due to capacity issues, mainly people not wanting to be carers and not being able to make use of the limited amount of care available in non contracted organisations due to procurement regs.

Don't go to your MP and complain about the Council, go to them and ask what they will be doing to tackle this national crisis.

Another question would be why didn't your organisation bid for the tender. And if they did why did the Council not feel confident enough to include them on the framework?
 
Vanquish-Storm said:
It’s like that across the country, MPs are the ones that have placed he NHS in this position.

If a number of people contact their MP across the country maybe they will wake up.
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not entirely, bed blocking is an issue too and it sounds, from his OP, that is isn't just MPs but the local council contributing to the issue
 
FortuitousFluke said:
mainly people not wanting to be carers
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Had a fair few who left where I work to do caring (and now moved to other jobs) and/or come to work here that used to do caring and most of them are sick of silly split shifts, poor wages compared to what they are doing but worse than that poor or lacking remuneration of expenses, etc. and horrifically bad management - most of them actually want to do caring but the state of the industry has drove them from it.
 
Rroff said:
Had a fair few who left where I work to do caring (and now moved to other jobs) and/or come to work here that used to do caring and most of them are sick of silly split shifts, poor wages compared to what they are doing but worse than that poor or lacking remuneration of expenses, etc. and horrifically bad management - most of them actually want to do caring but the state of the industry has drove them from it.
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I should have been more specific really. It's not necessary the work that's the problem, although anyone going into it thinking it's about chatting to old dears and making cups of tea usually leaves quite quick. There are a range of factors that make care work unappealing to large sections of the population. Pressure, poor contracts, bad management, long hours and it's really hard work. Look at the majority of agencies and you'll see a lot of their branches have worryingly high levels of staff turnover and very low levels of recruitment.
 
FortuitousFluke said:
I should have been more specific really. It's not necessary the work that's the problem, although anyone going into it thinking it's about chatting to old dears and making cups of tea usually leaves quite quick. There are a range of factors that make care work unappealing to large sections of the population. Pressure, poor contracts, bad management, long hours and it's really hard work. Look at the majority of agencies and you'll see a lot of their branches have worryingly high levels of staff turnover and very low levels of recruitment.
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I can only comment from my experience but most of those that have come through us have no problems with hard work or long hours and doing some less than pleasant tasks - but have encountered some ridiculous split shift requirements which I'm guessing are partly due to staff turnover (these kind of split shifts should be banned IMO anyhow but that is another story) and management that are basically bullies as well as bad at management and just gone nope and moved on.

Where I work is basically hard work and long hours and most people only do it temporary so anyone coming to us isn't exactly looking for an easy time heh - that some of them are coming back to us, despite not being an industry they want to work in and actually want to do caring, says it all IMO.
 
As you are in Staffordshire, nope. The moronic MPs here would have kept her waiting for twice that had they got involved
 
Rroff said:
I can only comment from my experience but most of those that have come through us have no problems with hard work or long hours and doing some less than pleasant tasks - but have encountered some ridiculous split shift requirements which I'm guessing are partly due to staff turnover (these kind of split shifts should be banned IMO anyhow but that is another story) and management that are basically bullies as well as bad at management and just gone nope and moved on.

Where I work is basically hard work and long hours and most people only do it temporary so anyone coming to us isn't exactly looking for an easy time heh - that some of them are coming back to us, despite not being an industry they want to work in and actually want to do caring, says it all IMO.
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That's the big point really. I've had a lot of experience working with branch managers and there are a lot of people who leave after the first week as they had the wrong impression about the job. But the people who do stay tend to really care, And the fact that we're at the point where even they can't stick it anymore is worrying.
 
I've contacted three different MPs over the years, two within government and one in opposition.

Unfortunately, simply being your mp doesn't mean they will be useful.

Alison seabeck was completely useless, despite being in government, she tried to blame the opposition for the problem (despite Labour having both local and national government at the time), then informed me that the opinion of MPs was more important than any scientific evidence of effectiveness...

Oliver Colville was much more helpful, facilitating meetings with people who could actually help and making more progress in a few months than the local residents had managed in a few years.

Unfortunately, he was then voted out in the last election in favour of luke pollard, who is the most feckless mp I have ever experienced, more concerned about his social media presence and attracting students than actually doing anything for his constituents, and blaming anything and everything on the Tories regardless of actual fault. That's not to mention the outright lies on his campaign leaflets (it was his leaflets shown in parliament promising to wipe all student dbbt)
 
Take it from someone who is a specialist practitioner in the local trust who tasked with "vacating" beds.

Problem is not just with the NHS alone, the resources are just not available in the community from both social care and the CCG's therefore preventing elderly frail patients being discharged with the correct support.

Thus rapidly filling ED department with a lot who do not need to be there in the first instance leading to rapidly increasing bed blockages.

The government gives no incentives to recruit nurses as the pay is pants unless in a management position therefore leading to triaging patients with less

MP's cant to didly squat, may and hunt are the only ones that can make an effective change
 
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