NOTEBOOK by BILL HEANEY
West Dunbartonshire Health and Social Care Partnership want to hear from you, according to the advertisement above.
I doubt if they want to hear from me though since my view is that the Scottish Government’s idea of having them in the first place was, and continues to be, a disaster.
How anyone thinks it’s a good idea to delegate to this committee something as important as the future of our local health services is a mystery to me.
In the way that spin doctors have, this advertisement has been dressed up to make it look as if it will bring about an outcome that will benefit the residents of West Dunbartonshire.
Going on their track record, I have serious doubts about that.
This is the committee that sacked a GP during the Covid pandemic when there was a shortage of doctors on the ground to deal with the problem which was obviously well above their abilities.
They then dispersed the sacked doctor’s patients to other practices (or maybe just one practice) which was the one now chaired by the chairperson of the Health and Social Care Partnership.
They also transferred more than 1,000 of his patients without consulting the patients themselves and despite the fact that more than 1,000 of them had signed a petition which earnestly requested the sacked doctor should remain in post because he was well qualified, loved even and respected by them. They didn’t even take the petition to the their committee for discussion. Public opinion, who cares about that?
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the practice which took on the extra workload are now saying they don’t have enough doctors to cope with demand and that they are having to bring in locums. At great expense to the NHS no doubt.
This boondoggle (an American expression meaning an unnecessary, wasteful, or fraudulent project), of which we have more than our fair share in West Dunbartonshire, was only brought to an end when the sacked GP’s case was brought before a judge-led employment tribunal and thrown out.
I had the privilege of giving evidence to the tribunal supporting the fact that the doctor, who was my GP and whose practice I had been in since birth, had been unlawfully sacked by the Health and Social Care Partnership on behalf of the Health Board and the NHS.
I was delighted when he was cleared and restored to the Health Board payroll in a different practice, but he never got his own practice back since it had been dismantled before the employment tribunal had met to deal with his case.
West Dunbartonshire Council know all about this, but they appear to have an aversion to the truth and to be utterly opposed to public opinion on anything at all.
Despite the fact that the HSCP is a basket case, they chose in a questionable way to delegate the finance of the Levengrove Pavilion Cafe to them and, surprise, surprise not, it collapsed and was forced to pay off vulnerable staff.
But did they apologise? Did they withdraw the allegations they made against the doctor? No, they banned me and refused to allow me to ask them questions. I was told to take the Freedom of Information route which can take weeks if not months for an answer.
Then they told a community council that I was not a “real journalist” and that I wasn’t qualified to do the job.
The council’s motto was changed when the current mob took over from Together to something quite unremarkable.
They should put up a new one along the lines of “Never Apologise, Never Explain and Refuse to take the Blame — Always.”
- As for the advert for the engagement strategy and policy shaping sessions about people’s health, they made their first blunder of this episode by failing to include venues for Alexandria and Balloch.
Dumbarton Health Centre and the Pavilion Cafe in Levengrove Park which between them the Council and the HSCP couldn’t even manage to spell properly.
When the SNP lose devolved power in a couple of years time, priority areas for particular scrutiny should be their ‘reorganisations’ of public service under their watch.
Police Scotland should be first on the list followed by a forensic review of the Integration’ process that created Health and Social Care partnerships.
The policy intention was fine, to bring health and social care together, a sort of holy grail of unfinished business following the post war implementation of the Beveridge Report.
However, the main problem they sought to resolve, the crisis in social care and the consequence bed blockage of persons seeking appropriate packages for discharge was never going to be achieved without added resource.
Sadly the community health services they were given stewardship have not led planned developments to move the focus of care away from acute hospitals, but seen a fragmentation and confusion manifesting as examples outlined in this article.
Clearly there needs to be a rethink, national care service? But it will probably be best to leave radical thinking to a fresh administration unburdened with the past commitments to failing current structures.