Oct
22
Written by:
David Williams
22/10/2010 11:44
After weeks of interest the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) is out in the public domain. The NHs has been heralded as one of the areas to be safe from custs from the CSR. The reality is that the NHS was asked to make efficiency savings by the last government and the current government wishes these to be delivered at the same time as reforming the NHS. See earlier blogs about the plans for reform.
In this week's blog, a quick chance to share some of the information about what this means for the offender healthcare.
On July 7th 2010 the Royal College of Nursing published an article in which it identified that in the NHS 10,000 jobs would go, from recruitment freezes, not replacing retiring staff and redundancies. This was a lot earlier than the announcement from the CSR.
In this week's CSR 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. If we then consider that there will be less staff across the NHS, across the criminal justice system to support our service improvement work we are facing a very big challenge.
Now is the time to plan for the future, develop new staff structures, make the most from efficiency savings. Implement those plans that will make a difference to patients but are a bit tricky to get going. Now more than ever organisations need to work together, don't wait until you have an overspent budget before you start thinking what you are going to do.
For staff at all levels now is the time to make changes to ensure we don't start limiting or cancelling our provision to those in contact with the criminal justice system.
Monday November 1st is probably the day when we find out if we are to stay or be placed at risk of redundancy, you can't bank on our support for many more months...
Don't think of the fence around the NHS like you may think of a prison wall, a fence has air gaps, things move through them. Like the rest of the public sector the NHS is not immune to change.
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.