Showing posts with label Vale Farm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vale Farm. Show all posts

Thursday 16 June 2016

'I have been put up for sale by NHS England' - Amazing Grace petitions David Cameron

Grace demonstrates outside Monitor/NHS Improvement

Grace Balogun is seeking support for her petition LINK to save her Sudbury (Vale Farm) GP Practice from the market. She tells David Cameron why he should intervene below.


Let me introduce myself .My name is Grace and I need urgent help. I am a National Health Service patient and, along with my fellow patients of the fantastic Sudbury GP surgery in Wembley. I have been put up for sale by NHS England. The same NHS England that loves to talk about "patient choice" but all NHS England really care about is "the market in healthcare". BUT I TALK - AND CARE - ABOUT MY FAMILY DOCTORS WHO KEEP ME WELL AND GIVE ME THE CARE MY COUNTRY PROMISED ME FOR WORKING AND LIVING IN THIS COUNTRY - FOR LIFE, CRADLE TO GRAVE.

I live in the London Borough of Brent, an area where we already have a shortage of GPs, more GPs retiring , and a largely deprived population which is expected to expand over the next 5 years by about 80,000 people. I suffer from a range of major health issues which means that I live my life in a wheelchair. Don't get me wrong. I have a good and happy life – or I did until NHS England decided – without asking me – that it would be a good idea to take away from me the Family Doctors who have cared for me for the last 14 years. GP's who I would follow ,if they moved halfway across the country – but my wheelchair bound status makes that pretty tricky. To add insult to injury, I have already had one fight - alongside my fellow patients - lasting 9 years, and including threatened legal action against the NHS, to keep my Doctors from being tendered out for sale before. That fight - I thought - ended in 2013. 

 
Patients make a stand against marketisation
So WHY is Sudbury Surgery Patient List again "up for sale", and my fragile care threatened?

NOT TO SAVE MONEY. THE NEW CONTRACT WILL COST NHS ENGLAND £70,0000 A YEAR MORE. NOT BECAUSE OUR GPS AND THEIR TEAM ARE NO GOOD – although senior officials in NHS England London region (including the Boss) wrote telling my MP, my local councillors and a Brent patient group that they were not "performing" - ridiculous allegations they have since had to withdraw.

 NOT BECAUSE IT IS HARD FOR ME TO GET AN APPOINTMENT WITH MY GP – no, we are known in Brent for having fantastic service from our surgery.

NOT BECAUSE OF INADEQUATE SERVICES -We have EXTRA SERVICES, like in-house professional counselling sessions every week, a GP specially trained in mental health services, a specialist diabetic clinic and diabetic nurse, methadone prescribing service, minor surgery, acupuncture and were just about to start the practice as a GP training practice. Our practice also hosts a walk-in blood testing clinic, and the out of hours "overflow" GP appointments for our locality. Sudbury Surgery does a fantastic service for the community, IN the community. It is run by a not for profit social enterprise.

NO, I have been put up for sale because MY DOCTORS ARE JUST TOO GOOD. Since their social enterprise got the contract 3 short years ago, the patient list has grown from 5000 to 8600, and is still growing. How I wish it had stayed at less than 6000! Why, you ask me? Because, at less than 6000 patients, apparently, according to NHSE England, a "patient list" is "unattractive to the market" . Market, what market ? The market to which my surgery and the 15 other practices in "Tranche 4 London GP practices" NHS England gleefully advertised as the "greatest number of opportunities to potential providers yet" -when it held a "market engagement event" helpfully timed when our GPs were serving their patients in surgery. Bulk sale opportunity! Does it sound as though NHS England is interested in keeping the practice with our ordinary, caring, hardworking GPs?

Those companies who attended the "event" included (off-shore) Virgin Healthcare (who wanted us last time), Care UK, and The Practice Group (who have just "bulk" handed back 5 GP practices in Sussex to the NHS (meaning of course the patients in their patient lists) after taking them over, when their funding was cut - there's a reassuring precedent).

When we realised what was happening, Sudbury Surgery's patients got together, had meetings, wrote many long letters to NHSE, and to NHS (so-called) Improvement who is supposed to regulate "competition" in the NHS, demonstrated outside the Department of Health, NHS England, attracted newspaper attention and explained to and collected the signatures of over 3700 INDIVIDUAL PATIENTS to a petition saying "NHS ENGLAND PLEASE GO AWAY AND LEAVE US WITH THE GPS WHO HAVE CARED FOR US FOR OVER 14 YEARS".

We have struggled for 9 months using every avenue open to us. HAS IT MADE ANY DIFFERENCE? NO. So now I am calling on David Cameron and Jeremy Hunt and The Queen to intervene and ask NHS England to take my Doctors 'practice out of the tender NOW. I was promised cradle to grave care in the NHS - not to be a commodity patient - attractive to a "market". Not that I think a patient like me with complex health needs will be very attractive to a "provider" interested in "markets" PLEASE, PLEASE LET ME AND MY FELLOW SUDBURY SURGERY PATIENTS KEEP THE DOCTORS THEY LOVE, and save the NHS £70,000 a year .

Sign Grace's petition HERE

Monday 8 June 2015

Discover some Brent local history this summer

Guest blog by Philip Grant
 
Some of the comments on last month’s blog about the unexploded Second World War bomb which was unearthed at Wembley Park suggest that there are “Wembley Matters” readers interested in local history. Wembley History Society has been promoting an interest in the area’s history for over sixty years, and here are some of the activities it is involved in which give you the chance to discover more.
If you live in Kingsbury, and thought that history was just something you had to learn in school, with lots of dates that you could never remember, there is an Adult Learners’ Week event on Tuesday 16 June which may change your mind. “History – it’s a walk in the park!” will take you on a guided walk around Roe Green Park, looking at features you may have passed by without knowing the stories behind them. The walk leaves Kingsbury Library at 1.30pm, and details can be found HERE
 
This event is free, and there is no need to book – just turn up by 1.25pm on the day if you want to take part.
Kingsbury Cricket Team, c.1901
If Sudbury is your local area, there is a community local history project taking place at the moment which could be “up your street”. Wembley History Society and Brent Archives are working with residents’ associations, schools and individuals to put together material for a display in the autumn. “Sudbury –Then and Now” is inviting people to “adopt” one of many old photographs and postcards of the area, find out a little about the story behind it, and take a matching colour view of the scene in 2015. If you think that this would be of interest to you, more details can be found on the Sudbury Town Residents’ Association website HERE which includes a pdf presentation about the project, and how you can get involved.
The Mall, Sudbury. c.1914
Vale Farm Swimming Pool, 1950's
 If you prefer to get your information from an illustrated talk, there is an opportunity to find out more about some of Brent’s most unusual homes from the 1920’s and 1930’s, and the man who designed them, on Friday 19 June. “Ernest Trobridge – Kingsbury’s Extraordinary Architect” is the subject of a Wembley History Society presentation at English Martyrs’ Hall, just off Blackbird Hill, Wembley Park, beginning at 7.30pm. There are details HERE and on the poster above
Philip Grant

Monday 29 July 2013

Allotment plots available in Brent NOW!

A corner of my allotment at Birchen Grove
I was under the impression that there were huge waiting list at all Brent allotments but today Brent Council tweeted that there were vacant plots available immediately at 7 sites without waiting lists. I am not sure if this fact has been conveyed to people on the waiting list at other sites so here are the details:

Seven allotment sites in Brent now have plots immediately available for anyone who wants to try their hand at food growing

The vacancies are at:
  • Dors Close, Kingsbury
  • Cecil Avenue, Wembley
  • Kinch Grove, Kenton
  • Lyon Park Avenue, Alpterton
  • Sudbury Court Road, Sudbury
  • Vale Farm, Wembley
  • Woodfield Avenue, Wembley.
Allotment gardening is a great way to grow healthy food, keep active and works out a cost of just 22p a day for a standard size-five pole plot - that's about half the size of a tennis court and is big enough to grow enough fruit and veg for a small family.

Apply online for an allotment plot or call 020 8937 5619.