Brent Big Health Debate Meetings in October

From Brent NHS Clinical Commissioning Group

Local Commissioing Intentions Followup Meetings

As places are limited please can you contact Sandra Sam-Yorke at brentccg.engagement@nhs.net  8900 5376 to register as soon as possible. Also you can review and comment on our draft commissioning intentions using our online survey HERE

Topic	Locality	Date	Venue	Lead
Integration of health and social care	Wembley	16-Oct, 3-5pm	WCHC Boardroom,   116 Chaplin Road, Wembley, HA0 4UZ	Sean Girty
Community services	Willesden	22-Oct 2-4pm	Willesden Centre for Health & Care Robson Avenue, Willesden Green, NW10 3RY	Isha Coombes
Mental Health Community Action on Dementia	Kilburn	23 Oct, 12-5pm	Clayton Crown Hotel   142-152 Cricklewood Broadway, NW2 3ED	Brent Council & CCG
Planned care	Kilburn	23-Oct, 1-3pm	St Anne’s Church - 125 Salusbury Road, West Kilburn, NW6 6RG	Huw Wilson
Mental Health Post-traumatic stress disorder	Harness	27-Oct, 11:30-1pm	Brent Mind The Design Works Park Parade, Harlesden,NW10 4HT	Brent Mind
Mental Health Brent User Group	Wembley	29-Oct,  3-5.30pm or 5-7.30pm	Patidar Centre 22 London Rd, Wembley, Middlesex HA9 7EX	Brent User Group

Greens condemn disproportionate use of tasers on black people

Green Party deputy leader Shahrar Ali has called on Home Secretary Theresa May to review the use of tasers and investigate why they are being used so often, after Home Office data showed black people were three times more likely than white people to have the weapons used against them.

Ali said:

These figures show that institutional racism is alive and well in our police force. The disproportionate use of stop and search powers against black people is worrying enough. Tasers are dangerous weapons, and their continued use, even in extreme circumstances, must be subject to review.

The public have a right to a wider debate on the deployment of tasers on UK streets and the Home Secretary must urgently look into why tasers are being used so often

TTIP: 'A box of tricks for corporate climate criminals'

A new briefing in English by AITEC and CEO explains why TTIP, and especially regulatory cooperation, could put a stranglehold on our ability to create the energy transition required to tackle climate change.

The new briefing gives examples of how regulatory cooperation in TTIP will enable big polluters to keep polluting and will help corporations tangle up regulations they dislike.

Regulatory cooperation could be the weapon to kill legislation to make investment in coal more expensive or to kill regulations to ramp up the energy efficiency of electrical appliances.

TTIP is thus a threat to climate justice.

Charity: Education fragmentation threatens quality special needs provision

I know that special educational needs provision in Brent is an issue of concern for many parents and teachers as funding becomes tighter and schools are pressured by high stakes testing. This report from the BBC may be of interest:

 A new code for special educational needs and disability came into effect last year. Even so, a series of changes has left pupils in England with special educational needs and disability (Send) in a "fragmented" system, a charity has said. The Driver Youth Trust report says the changes have caused confusion and a greater variation in the quality of help offered. The charity calls for a review of support for children with Send.

  The Driver Youth Trust outlines a number of changes since 2010 that have affected children with Send and their families. It highlights the Academies Act 2010, which enabled more schools in England to become academies, free from local authority control, as well as changes in 2012 aimed at ending disparities in school funding. Also, in September 2014, a new special educational needs (SEN) code of practice came into force in England, with the stated aim of putting pupils at the centre of their education planning.

   Changes under the new Send code of practice include: 

♦  covering young people from birth to the age of 25 - previously it was from the age of two to 19

♦  parents and children are supposed to have a greater say in decisions that affect them

♦  local authorities have to publish a "local offer" for Send - details of what support services they have available

♦  SEN statements and learning difficulty assessments (LDAs) have been replaced with education, health and care (EHC) plans taking children and young people through to the age of 25

♦  a new system for categorising pupils' needs, so that support can be more graduated

♦  young people and parents of pupils with an EHC plan can ask for personal budgets, which give them more say in how money for their provision is spent

  The charity says some schools are struggling to provide high-quality teaching and support.

The Driver Youth Trust says these changes have contributed to a fragmentation that means "navigating the system has become incredibly challenging for students, parents, schools and sector organisations". And with school increasingly expected to meet children's needs in the classroom rather than through specialist provision, teachers "more than ever need training and accurate information about their pupils".

 The outcomes for Send pupils are increasingly dependent on a school's leadership, it says.

The charity is calling for school leaders to regard Send pupils' achievement as a whole-school priority, not just that of specialist staff. It calls on the government to reform school admissions so that all schools are part of the same process and subject to independent appeals - whether or not they are an academy. And it urges councils to engage parents and young children in the development of their local offers.

  The DfE said it had received positive feedback about the changes from many families. A spokeswoman said: "A year ago we introduced the biggest reforms to the Send system in a generation. These are ensuring that support is focused on needs and aspirations - and we know that when parents and young people are properly involved with the development of that support, their experiences improve. We are already seeing a real difference, with parents telling us the process is much more straightforward - but we want these experiences to continue improving.

"That's why we are providing more than £1.5m between 2013 and 2016 to the Driver Youth Trust and the Dyslexia Specific Learning Difficulties Trust to provide expert advice and training to schools, ensuring that good practice is shared and the best support possible is available.

Corbyn and Council Cuts: Time for a united resistance?

Local councils are currently drawing up their budgets for 2016-17 with the accompanying cuts to accommodate the cuts in local government funding. Council leaders across the political spectrum have warned that these are cuts too far and will have a devastating impact on core services.

The budgets are often part of a 3 or 4 year plan started a year or two ago. Labour councils (and the defeated Green minority council in Brighton) have used the 'dented shield' argument that only they can make the chocies that will preserve vital services.  This looks increasingly weak as the cuts accumulate and the poor are hit.

Since those cuts were projected in budgets the political situation has changed. On the one hand the Tories are back in power but on the other hand Jeremy Corbyn has won the leadership on an anti-austerity ticket with a surge of support, often from local activists involved in housing, NHS and cuts campaigns.

The run up to local and the London Mayoral and GLA elections will be accompanied by local press stories on the council cuts and their impact on vulnerable adult care, children's social services, provision for children with special education needs, local libraries and youth provision.

Labour will be in the contradictory position of having an anti-austerity national Labour leadership and a local leadership that is implementing the government's anti-austerity measures.

There has been a silence from the new Labour shadow cabinet on this so far but the call for resistance and a strong campaign based on local activists and public sector unions that was made under the last Labour leadership by the left must surely be repeated with added urgency now?

I have raised this issue in Green Party circles with a varied response. Some have shrugged and said, 'What else can local councils do?' and suggested we concentrate on the source of the cuts - the Tories and their ideology - emphasising that there is no need for the cuts but it is a choice that the Conservatives have made: Councils have no choice. This leaves us with divisive debates about exactly where the cuts will fall.

Others see the Corbyn phenomenon and the various broad alliances proposed (Momentum, Red Pepper circles etc) as well as the People's Assembly and trade unions as an opportunity to build a massive resistance.

What advice will Corbyn give local coucils?

I publish below a response I received about this from a Green Party activist:

I agree that we have to draw attention to the inconsistency between having an "anti-austerity" policy position, whilst being forced to implement austerity cuts locally, which are once again directed at the most vulnerable, in a deliberately discriminatory and disproportionate manner.

e.g. Disability groups have been calling for a 'Cumulative Impact Assessment' (CIA) to asess what the cumulative effects are, of 'multiple cuts' to different services and benefits, on those who (being the most vulnerable) rely on a range of different benefits and services. There are assessments of each individual cut, but no asessment of those who are subjected to multiple cuts over time. This has been requested repeatedly for several years now, and the Government/DWP still refuses to do it. Meanwhile, there has been a rise in the death-toll of vulnerable people, and those people deserve not to die unacknowledged, while their 'deaths' were a deliberate 'colateral-damage' decision, which was made by Tory 'policy-makers'.

"The United Nations is carrying out an unprecedented inquiry into “systematic and grave violations” of disabled people’s human rights by the UK government"
http://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/confirmed-un-is-investigating-uks-grave-violations-of-disabled-peoples-rights/

We need to be behind this move by the UN and seen to be showing solidarity with anti-austerity disabled rights groups around the country, who have been on the receiving end of these deliberately 'Targeted' cuts for 5 years already. Cuts which have potentially contributed to thousands of deaths.

Either Labour are going to be an opposition thorn in this sociopathic government's side, or they are going to continue with the Neoliberal narrative that 'economics' makes it all inevitable because... money, family purse, budget... mixing macro-economics with family economics like the Tories always do, and confusing people's perceptions of how 'money/debt' is created (while the Tories have doubled the 'debt' and handed the 'money' to their old-school corporate chums). The Green Party has a new and important policy around money-creation, and this is also a big opportunity for Greens to push that & to explain it to the public, so as to dispell the 40 year old Thatcherite meme of a family purse budget.

A Green New Deal is beneficial socially, economically and environmentally. It ticks all the boxes as the alternative to 'austerity'. A nation-wide renewable energy and energy efficiency programme (managed at the 'Local' level), coupled to electrification of transport (which would require offshore wind wave tidal development), would be a massive (but increasingly urgent) undertaking, which would both improve 'quality-of-life' for people locally, as well as mitigate some of the damage we're doing to the environment. Voters need to know that the Tory government are letting Britain be left behind in the new global renewable energy industry, which has massive social & economic benefits if encouraged to prosper.

One of Thatcher's biggest crimes, was not investing North Sea oil tax revenues in the renewable energy technologies which were available at the time, like on/offshore wind power, and solar water heaters & insulation for homes etc etc. The 'jobs' thus created could have replaced the coal jobs lost, instead of throwing tens of thousands into unemployment, with no new jobs to go to. Those new sustainable jobs are still screaming out to be created. Austerity is a lie. It is the diversion of Public money into Private offshore accounts without the 'societal' benefits that should come from creating that money.

But let's not forget there are powerful neoliberal forces in Labour still. The first Bail-Out was under Brown and that alone was enough to pay off every single mortgage in the UK at the time. Those people haven't just gone away because Corbyn became 'Leader' and there hasn't been a huge shift in policy position by the Parliamentary Labour Party as far as I can tell - so far.

Earl Bramley-Howard
West Mendip Green Party

Brent Coucil and TfL must take action on dangerous Wembley Asda junction

Watch this video carefully and you will see a woman with a push chair trying to cross Forty Lane at the junction with the Asda slip road and King's Drive, Wembley Park.

The volume of traffic means that vehicles bestride the pedestrian crossing  and move across it, even when the green 'man' indicates pedestrians should cross.  The traffic lights are positioned on the south side of the junction and there is is no further indicator for vehicles on the pedestrian crossing itself.

I witnessed both adults and children dodging between the moving traffic this morning beyween 8.50 and 9am as they go to school or retrun from dropping children off.

I have tweeted the video to Transport for London and Brent Council calling for urgent action. More traffic build up at peak times has been forecast by Transport for London as a result of the road works at Neasden.

There is bound to be an accident at this spot sooner or later.

Whose Wembley? Is Quintain delivering for local people?

The PR and the actuality of the regeneration of the area around Wembley by Quintain Estates (taken over by a US private finance company in July sometimes seem at odds.

On the ground as the video shows the new developments seem cluttered and clashing and the amount of high rise more than originally expected.

Quintain could argue that you cannot judge the development until all phases are completed. Certainly true regarding the open space but I had a look today at the 'Alto' housing development.

I was shown a 2 bedroomed flat price £515,000 for a lease of 299 years (apparently the last one sold for £485,000) . The small print showed that in addition to this there is a ground rent of £500. A 'Reservation' deposit of £2000 is required and then 10% deposit payable within 21 days of exchange of contracts, a further 10% deposit from the initial exchange and, and the 80% balance due on completion.  The service charge will include  24 hr concierge and security, building insurance, garden maintenenace and use of the resdients' gym. It is estimated at £3.65 per sq feet per annum which works out at about £2,858 per annum for a 783 sq foot 2 bedroomed apartment.

The apartment itself seemed nothing special. The rooms were small and there was little storage built in. I was unable to find out what happened to waste disposal.

But really it isn't the apartment itself that is being sold but its location and life style:

Wembley Park is home to the iconic Wembley Stadium the SSE Arena Wembley and the Hilton London Wembley.

Savvy shoppers will find retail heaven in the super smart London designer Outlet where there are 50 fashion brands of generously discounted prcies, 20 restaurants and coffee shops and a 9 screen 1800 seat cinema comple. The new Wembley Theatre, an innovative revolving auditorium with 1300 seats, opens in May 2016.

There were only a few apartments left unsold from this phase of the development. This is a plan for one of the two-bedroomed apartments:

 Clearly the question of affordability comes up even for those in full-time work. The median gross weekly pay in Brent in 2013 was £537.50 compared with the London average of £613.50. Zoopla issued the following housing statistics last week. House price rises and rent increases in Brent are amongst the highest in London.

When it comes to future plans the Quintain Wembley Masterplan is rather vague on what type of housing is envisaged LINK

We are committed to building homes that meet the lifetime homes standard and follow the GLA’s housing design guidance. Discussions are underway with Brent Council regarding priorities around borough-wide infrastructure and affordable housing.

 ■ Around 4,000 much-needed new high-quality homes for Brent

You can provide feedback on Quintain's plans here: info@wembleypark.com

Three passionate voices on the education crisis

I tweeted the above open letter, first published in the TES, yesterday on both @WembleyMatters and @GreenEdPolicy and it has been retweeted many time, including by the writer and broadcaster Michael Rosen. The letter clearly resonates at a time when many teachers are leaving the profession.

Michael Rosen posted this on Facebook earlier today:

On the Guardian thread about teacher shortages and how they could possibly have come about, I posted some government policies to keep teaching recruitment and retention down:

1. Encourage the press to run stories saying that teachers are lazy and that there are thousands of bad ones.
2. Get the head of Ofsted to say the same.
3. Keep this up for decades. (both main parties)
4. Bring in hundreds of measuring and assessment systems, levels, targets, tests, exams, which then breed more 'rehearsal' tests and exams.
5. Bring in a punitive, rapid, unsupportive inspection system which ignores the fact that scores are attached to children so that if you're in a school where there has been turnover the inspectorate say that has nothing to do with us.
6. Run a new kind of school where the salaries of management are not open to public scrutiny.
7. Allow interest groups to open schools which take on proportionally fewer SEN, EAL and FSM pupils than nearby LA schools.
8 Allow covert selection and exclusion process to take place around these new kinds of schools because the LA schools have to pick up the pieces.
9. Use international data as if it is holy writ and ignore evidence that suggests that comparing countries does not compare like with like, that some countries which are 'top' are selecting. Obscure the differences between the countries by only talking about 'places' in the table, without ever making clear whether these differences are 'significant' or not.
10. Use China as an example of utopia in education without making a comparison between the two societies - as if education exists separately from the societies that produce the respective education systems.
11. Make sure that very nearly all the people running the state education system from government have no, or very little, state education experience themselves.

Yesterday, Kevin Courtney (who also retweeted the letter as @cyclingkev ) Deputy General Secretary of the NUT spoke at the London Green Party Annual General Meeting on 'Fighting for the Education our young people deserve.' This is an extract from his speech that was delivered with as much passion as demonstrated by Colin Harris and Michael Rosen.

Things have got to change if our education system is to survice as fit for purpose.