It is difficult to blog and share with you our plans for the future when there is such great uncertainty about the future within the NHS. We anticipate that the feedback from the consultation of the governments white paper on Equality and Excellence: Liberating the NHS will provide more information. This is due in earyl December.

However it does not mean we are doing nothing.  Last week we got some good informal feedback from West Midlands Police about the place of safety work following an unannounced inspection from the police and health inspectors, we also received feedback from the National Police Improvement Agency about a programme of mental health and learning disability training that they are rolling out to police officers.

In this week's blog, a quick chance to share some of the information about what this means for the offender healthcare.

The RCN has identified that in the NHS 10,000 jobs would go, from recruitment freezes, not replacing retiring staff and redundancies. HM Treasury highlights about 500,000 jobs to go in the public sector, the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development feels this is an underestimate and 750,000 jobs will go. (See here)

We are working on a 0% flat cash approach to prison health budgets, taking into account the staff pay freeze, drug costs increase and other external cost increases this will be a budget cut in real terms.

All I can urge you to do, is to think and take action now, procrastinating until another day could make the changes you will have to make even greater.