Tag Archives: health
Carers benefit from courses to help them look after themselves
The Looking After Me Course
Carers have been given useful advice to help them looking after themselves.
The Looking After Me Course, run by Education Programme for Patients, is aimed at carers providing them with information such as relaxation, healthy eating and communication skills.
A recent course was run in Pembrokeshire where 50 per cent of the participants cared for their spouse or partner and a further 40 per cent were carers for their child with long-term health conditions. Fifty per cent of participants also had a long-term health condition themselves.
Norman Lamb, King’s Fund – Integration
Transforming Local Services
A reshuffle is a strange thing.
I’ve followed the health reforms pretty closely so I’m relatively up to speed.
But often, new ministers find themselves in departments where they know only the bare bones of the policy. And they’re expected to turn themselves into experts overnight.
I’ve been an MP long enough to hear my fair share of new ministers read out speeches in the Commons and clearly have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. The crueller members of the opposition can sometimes make it a bit of a trial for them.
But the machinations of government can’t just creak to a halt as the new people find their way around. So new ministers rely on ever-present civil servants to guide them. They rely on ministers who haven’t been reshuffled to keep a hand on the tiller. And they rely on their fellow new ministers to be conscientious, decisive and creative about their own parts of the portfolio.
‘Dangerous and flawed’: sacked minister Paul Burstow’s verdict on hospital cuts
Former health minister Paul Burstow launched a withering attack today on “dangerous” plans to cut hospital services in London.
07 September 2012
Hours after losing his government job, he told the Standard that a plan to axe a casualty and maternity unit in south-west London put patient safety at risk. In a wide-ranging interview the Liberal Democrat MP urged new Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to “bin” the proposals, and warned they were likely to lead to “more mothers giving birth in the back of their car”.
He also proposed changes to stop rail fares from spiralling.
Mr Burstow, 50, was born at St Helier hospital, which serves his Sutton and Cheam constituency but is now set to lose its A&E and maternity units under plans drawn up by health chiefs.
He dismissed the strategy as fundamentally flawed and warned it would also damage health services in Kingston and Croydon, as their hospitals would have to cope with more patients.
