RESIST THE BREAKUP OF THE NHS THROUGH PRIVATISATION AND CUTS!


BRIEF UPDATE April 2018
(N.B. This site is not currently being regularly updated. )


FOR COMING EVENTS, MEETINGS AND OTHER INFORMATION

SEE BELOW AND THE MAIN SSONHS WEBSITE

www.sheffieldsaveournhs.co.uk


To be put on the SSONHS mailing list or for any other queries please email teamssonhs@gmail.com


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The government's increasingly desperate attempts to defend their record on the NHS have become less and less credible over the last year. This is partly due to in
creasingly effective local and national campaigns and partly to the crisis in hospitals, primary care and social care has forced more and more of those involved to speak out against the damage being caused by austerity. But many of those who are being damaged have no voice. Poor people, disabled people and the chronically ill have fewer opportunities to make their case as their benefit and treatment rights become eroded. NHS staff are generally gagged in one way or another. Exit can be the only escape leaving the NHS still weaker and now less and less able to recruit staff from overseas.

Large national demonstrations and industrial action by junior doctors, nurses and others have made the strength of feeling around the country quite clear, to the extent that even the Conservatives have got worried enough to promise the outlines of a new financial deal this summer. But will it be too late? Certainly it will be insufficient to undo the damage inflicted since 2010. Meanwhile the stress on services which affect the need for healthcare becomes more and more acute. The unspupported costs of Social Care (which is subject to means tested charges) is driving local authorities to bankruptcy.

Another threat is the developing reorganisation into Integrated Care Systems (previously known as Accountable Care Systems) which threaten to become Accountable Care Organisations. In our local area the Integrated Care System covers Barnsley, Rotherham, Doncaster and Bassetlaw as well as Sheffield. (See posts below.) Increasing pressure from campaig
ners and within the Labour Party is deterring local councils to sign up to these in case they become vehicles for further cuts and privatisation.

Across South Yorkshire resistance is building to the threatened implications of the ICS for local services and South Yorkshire Save Our NHS have formed a political party to stand in the Sheffield City Region Mayoral election on May 3rd 2018. See also Barnsley Save Our NHS.


THE NHS IS
NHS21END_(Small)NOT KILLED OFF YET. Campaigning does work whether on the streets, in the press or, increasingly in the lawcourts. The government's high-handed tactics are being subjected to an increasing number of judicial reviews. At national level these have forced a public consultation on Accountable Care Organisations starting in May 2018.


Cartoons by Samantha Galbraith @sgalbraith47


For more national information see Health Campaigns Together and Keep Our NHS Public


FUTURE EVENTS


April 14th 2018 11.45 Regional Demonstration to Save the NHS Leeds

April 25th
Soviet Healthcare via Targets: Are Governments Bringing it into the NHS? Roco 2pm or 7pm

April 28th Sheffield Demonstration against proposed closure of the Minor Injuries and Walk-in Centres (see main website for details)

June 27th The NHS is 70 - but what is its life expectancy? Festival of Debate / SSONHS panel discussion and social. Roco 7pm - 11 pm.

June 30th Health Campaigns Together march for the NHS in London See main wesbite for details.

SSONHS planning and information meetings are generally on the first Monday of the month, except for bank holidays. They are usually at 6pm at the United Reform Church. Chapel Walk/Norfolk St S1


To contact us email teamssonhs@gmail.com

PREVIOUS EVENTS


In 2016 abnd 2017 we worked with Sheffield Festival of Debate and other colleagues to promote realistic discussion of the issues facing the NHS. On 4th May 2017 we had a lively meeting debating the future of hospitals and in 2016 we mounted an exhibition on NHS privatisation to coincide with a play, A DUTY OF CARE about Labour and the healthcare market. On 22nd November 2016 we held a panel-led debate on the future of the NHS with local NHS leaders, academics and campaigners. We also held a public meeting on 4th July 2016 to celebrate the NHS anniversary, discuss the STPs, the implications for privatisation in South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire and the consequences of the EU referendum result.


In March 2016 we held a successful workshop Taking Back Our NHS




We supported the Junior Doctors throughout their action because we felt they were being unfairly treated and were being treated as the advance guard for Hunt's uncosted, unfunded and misconceived ambition for a 7 day NHS. (For one of our supporter's views at the beginning of the dispute see this column in the Sheffield Star http://tinyurl.com/oo8qoc3)

For our questions to 2017 General Election candidates and canvassers about the NHS see our
website campaign page


2016 8th-22nd November Exhibition on NHS privatisation How come we didn't know by London photographer Marion Macalpine
Theatre Delicatessen, The Moor


22nd November SSONHS Festival of Debate event
Why is the NHS Under so much pressure? How can we save it for future generations?
Speakers included Dr Tim Moorhead, Chair, Sheffield CCG, Kevan Taylor (Sheffield Health and Social Care Trust) and Professor Sarah Salway (University of Sheffield, Public Health) + local campaigners

Taking Back Our NHS SSONHS workshop

Saturday 12th March 2016, 10am - 2pm

(2015)

Tuesday 22nd September, 7pm screening of Sell Off, attended by well over 100 people.

Campaigning for GP practices at risk of closure

2nd July Successful SSONHS public meeting addressed by Ray Tallis and speakers from Devonshire Green and Unison.

http://www.peoplesnhs.org/nhs-staffordshire-cancer/campaign-information/maydaymarchnhs/

2nd May SSONHS stall in city centre from 11.30 Come and see us.

The 38 degrees ambulance will also be in Surrey Street at 12pm and conveying the 38 degrees petitions to local Hallam candidates at Wesley Hall in Crookes for 3pm.

25th April - March through Sheffield Hallam, with the People's NHS and 38 degrees



28th February 38 degrees petitioning around Sheffield http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/health/local-health/campaigners-take-to-sheffield-streets-in-fight-to-save-nhs-1-7132981

22nd November Leafleting in Sheffield City Centre from 12.00 pm in support of the NHS strikers. For A5 and A4 copies of the leaflet which has more information on it see the Campaigns Page at our website

24th November NHS picket lines from 7am to 11am. Rallies at the Hallamshire and Northern General (Herries Road) at 10 am.


We were proud to support the Jarrow to London march for the NHS, organised by Darlington Mums passing through Sheffield on August Bank Holiday Monday. http://999callfornhs.org.uk/ Thanks to everyone for helping and joining in.

24th JULY 2014 Public Meeting jointly with Sheffield Medsin

Is our NHS really in crisis? Behind the headlines and soundbites
Panel discussion led by GPs and health experts from the NHS and universities.

For past activities see our website www.sheffieldsaveournhs.co.uk

Sunday 24 April 2016

Treat our doctors fairly Mr Hunt, so that they can treat us safely

Update 18th June
As the Junior Doctors begin to vote on the contract offer, opinion remains split. There are plenty of reasons for rejecting the offer but many doctors feel they have gone as far as they can and want to get on with their training/careers. Another result for Hunt - divide the opposition. Most are agreed that the current offer is a massive improvement on the original proposals and also on the March offer. There are some significant concessions by the junior doctors (for example the loss of increments) and other technical worries remain partly because of Hunt's insistence on the 7 day concept and his neutral cost envelope. But the main concern is the effect on staffing and recruitment as well as the loss of momentum in the huge wave of public support to preserve the NHS. The rejecters say "The contract on offer will not fix the recruitment and retention crisis. It is not going to help trainees on rotas with less than 50% fill rates such as GP and Core Medical Training. It is not going to help with the cost of living crisis as inflation continues to outstrip pay. It is not going to attract trainees back from abroad and encourage people to stay as a doctor in the NHS. It will drive LTFT [doctors in less than full-time training] out of medical and surgical specialties and possibly out of medicine as a career, despite the best efforts of our negotiators to prevent that. It will require a constant fight with management in order to be paid for the work we do, with no independent oversight, without concrete safeguards that a hospital has any legal duty to honour." See here

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We were asked by the Sheffield Star to submit a short article for possible publication in a feature on the strikes on 26th April. This is what we wrote.

"Talk to almost any junior doctor and you’ll immediately sense their anxiety not just about their own future but about the whole NHS. Jeremy Hunt’s insistence on trying to stretch the NHS while cutting its funding is squeezing staff at all levels beyond endurance. As numbers fall, junior doctors find themselves rostered to provide more and more extra cover with less help, often in unfamiliar surroundings and knowing that any mistake will be jumped on. In the 2015 NHS Staff Survey only 31% of staff agreed that there are enough staff for them to do their job properly.

We already have fewer doctors per head than most other European countries. 80% of junior doctors work unpaid overtime, often 11 hours a week. In 2008, 22% of doctors using the official ‘sick doctor service’ were aged under 35 but by 2015 that number was 54%. In 5 years newly qualified doctors joining NHS training schemes have reduced from 71% to 52%. Many trainees are planning gap years from this August because the proposed contract is the last straw. It also discriminates against women doctors.

Hunt’s 7 day service plan is based on misleading statistics and an ill-thought-out manifesto commitment totally derailed by his government’s austerity programme. The NHS will be less safe and possibly not even sustainable. Despite considerable progress in negotiations, the disagreement about Saturday working is less about pay than about clinical staff being able to retain enough control over their working lives to ensure they can make decisions and carry out treatments safely. If the doctors lose, nurses and other clinical staff will be next. We call on Sir Andrew Cash at STHFT not to implement the contract locally.

Without junior doctors our health service will collapse. Nobody wants these strikes but any short term safety risks are outweighed by the longer term danger of system collapse. Not all doctors’ strikes have been for the NHS but this one definitely is. They need our support."

Although several of us are away during the week, we shall be supporting the pickets at the major hospitals and the rally in Barkers Pool at 1pm on 27th April.