Monday 28 April 2008

BLPT board meeting

Due to be held this Wednesday. Selected highlights from the minutes from the previous meeting:
Lots of money to be spent on employing new people in management. Less money to be spent on people who work with those in need of help.

Cuts in services to achieve CRES savings did not have the desired effect of saving pots of money. More cuts needed - one suggestiong being to discharge lots of people back to primary care.

Lots of people who work directly with members of the public are off ill. 20% of posts in WAMH covered by temporary staff. No figure given for the number of posts not covered at all during staff absences. This is probably seen as a GOOD THING since it saves the Trust money.

Data surrounding complaints "incomplete". Surprised? No, I didn't think so.

Lots of people owe money to the Trust.

More new "steering groups" to be set up. "Death by committees"? Well, they have to look busy.

Several reports criticised as not being good enough.

And from the performance report:
Sewnior doctors to discharge lots of service users to primary care.
All referrals to go through a central point (one way of limiting access, perhaps?)
Lots and lots and lots of facts and figures and graphs. Looks like management are doing something even if all they are doing is generating the facts and figures and graphs.
There are lots of risks to sevice users (and to the reputation of the Trust) but nothing is being done to change this - they can be "managed" by CMHTs (even though they present risk....)
Only 6 complaints and 42 queries were handled by the (2? or more?) staff working in Complaints and PALS in the last month. That must be an average of two per working day. How I would like that workload! The main concerns highlighted seem to be recording ethnic origin of complainants. No mention of the survey. But I have received a copy ... I wonder if I am the only one. I suspect so.

Ho hum. Glad to see service users are at the heart of all this. Yeah, right.

3 comments:

Made by Mandy said...

More management eh?

You know what that means...apart from the obvious deteriation in services and loads more committee meetings....MORE SUITS!!!!!!

I wonder if there will be spring coloured pin stripes for the boys and jock straps for the girls.

Sorry but like for like. Ludicrous gets what it deserves? Actully it doesn't because the management will prevail..even when there is no service to be running.

Mark my words it will be that virtual service where you ring up and press a number to talk to the answerphone message that fits your symptoms and then you will be told to go forth and recover (alone)

Fiona Marcella said...

You mean they haven't considered the vital step of changing their name? For only £15,000 (plus the £50-60,0000 pa costs of a PR man "seconded" from the commercial world - hmm wonder why the commercial world could do without him so easily?) they could have had nice new shiny signs and letter head and that would have solved all their problems.

Disillusioned said...

Definitely more suits, Mandy. It is quite scary reading many of the comments in the Board papers. So much emphasis on saving money on services. So little concern with providing what patients are asking for (such as access to psychotherapy - the proposal for which was referred to yet another committee). And so very much "spin" around what seems to be their "Holy Grail" - the quest for Trust status.
Marcella - shhh! They'll get ideas! Although could be on the agenda - their current name doesn't exactly trip off the tongue!