Tuesday 28 February 2012

Guest Blog Mike Orton

Guest Blog: 

Choices on care will affect all our futures
Mike Orton



The demand for care for older people is growing rapidly and is placing enormous pressure on Council budgets. How councillors have responded to this says a lot about the nature of the political parties.
In childhood and youth, people rarely think about old age. As we see parents caring for our grandparents, we gradually begin to think about what care our parents and then ourselves might need. Today, more people are living for longer and for most, this means a fuller life. When the need for care does come, though, it often lasts for longer, is more complex and places greater demands on family carers.
Faced with these changing life patterns, I have believed for a long time that councils have a responsibility to make assistance and care readily available to all older people when they need for it. Care should be tailored to a person’s specific needs and choices. People should be helped to stay in their own home for as long as is practical when they want to. Care must be of a high quality, safe, friendly, and delivered in a way that respects a person’s dignity.  Carers must be given the support they so often desperately need. Councils should work in partnership with voluntary organisations but not use them as an excuse for cutting its own services. All this is what we are striving to achieve on Reading Borough Council within the context of massive cuts in Government funding, a fact which is well known and I am not focussing on this here. What I am saying, though, is that even within these national cuts, local councillors still have choice and can still determine their priorities.
Our budget for Adult Social Care for 2012/2013, which was approved on 21st February,  allocated £1.7million to allow for the expected increase in demand without cuts to services for vulnerable people or creating waiting lists for services. At the same time we are continuing to implement a major and continuous transformation programme which I initiated on behalf of the Labour Group in 2008. This aims to tailor services to peoples’ individual needs rather than only offering standard packages of care and enables people to live independent lives for much longer. Two examples of this are the reablement programme which provides intensive therapy to help people to continue to live independent lives, and the provision of new Extra Care Housing where people have their own home but support and care facilities are on site. Much of this work not only is improving the quality of care, it is providing services more cost effectively to allow us to stay within the budget available.
This approach was not true of the Coalition council last year. They put up charges for day centres to £43 a day and proposed to remove services from some people without knowing what the full implications were and. Labour stopped the 343 increase and protected vulnerable people as soon  as we formed a minority Administration in 2011.
Our approach is certainly not the same as that of the neighbouring Tory Councils of Wokingham and West Berkshire. They do not provide care to people until they are in critical need and they repeatedly cut the budget for care. The different choices made by Labour councillors and Tory councillors in what care they provide for elderly and other vulnerable people is chrystal clear for all to see.
Mike Orton
Lead councillor for Adult Social Care
Reading Borough Council


Sunday 12 February 2012

Let's Talk About Health and Well-Being in Reading

A consultation to gather local views on the things that affect people's health and well-being in Reading has begun. A series of public meetings will be held across the town and there is a questionnaire for people to fill in on-line and hard copy.

PLEASE CLICK THE 'LET'S TALK HEALTH' BUTTON AND TAKE A FEW MINUTES TO FILL IN THE QUESTIONNAIRE. WHAT YOU THINK MATTERS.

Let's Talk Health is part of the Council's 'Working Better With You' initiative, and will involve asking local residents to complete a questionnaire and attend discussion events across the town to identify how public health services can be more responsive to local needs. Among the questions being posed are:
  •  How well do local services support you to improve your health by losing weight, stopping smoking, preventing drug or alcohol abuse, improving your diet etc?
  •  What are the things that are most important to the health and well-being of you and your family (eg affordable fitness sessions, access to parks and open spaces, parenting advice, transport services etc) and how could these be improved?
  • How good or bad are local services like GPs, dentists, local hospitals, pharmacies, mental health etc?
The Council will use the results to shape its work, with other health partners, to ensure that the services that help people to lead healthy and long lives are working as effectively as possible.

As well as providing on-line and paper questionnaires, which will be available at libraries, leisure centres and other council buildings, as well as GP surgeries, dentists and local hospitals, Let's Talk Health will involve a series of public events aimed at getting people together to discuss public health services in the context of their local communities. There will also be a special 'select committee-type' event in which the public and health professionals will have an opportunity to talk about key health and well-being issues.

Councillor Bet Tickner, Lead Councillor for Public Engagement and Health said: 'Let's Talk Health will do exactly what it says on the tin. We want to get local people talking about public health services - what's good, what's not so good, and what we need to do more of to help people to lead long, healthy and happy lives. 

'It's important for the Council, and its partners in the NHS, to know people's views now that big changes to the way the NHS is run are being discussed in parliament and may soon become law. "I would like to encourage everyone in Reading to have their say. This is your chance to help us to help you by ensuring we are concentrating on the things that matter most to local people.'

Councillor Jan Gavin, Lead Councillor for Service Delivery and Improvement said: 'Local councillors are being given a new, wider role, working with the NHS and other health professionals, to protect and improve public health. 'GPs and hospitals will still be responsible for delivering front-line healthcare, but we want to ensure that all the other services that contribute to healthy lifestyles  from counselling to cancer-screening - are working as effectively as possible.

'The questionnaire has been designed to be quick and easy to complete and it would be great if as many local residents as possible were able to take a few minutes to give us their views, either on-line or by completing the hard-copy version. The information we gather from Let's Talk Health will influence our work in this important area now and in the future.'