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+--- Thread: health white paper - how are you planning to respond? (/showthread.php?tid=561)
RE: health white paper - how are you planning to respond? - Ed Hammond - 26-08-2010 03:13 PM
Hi all, Tim can probably confirm this, but I think that we have already produced a response which is on the website, and you are welcome to cannibalise it if you wish.
On a related subject, we will be submitting our response to the policing consultation in the next few days, and this will also be up on the site shortly.
RE: health white paper - how are you planning to respond? - tim gilling - 27-08-2010 06:45 AM
Unfortunately I cannot confirm it. We haven't produced our response yet.
We issued a press statement on the day of the white paper's publication and have subsequently produced a short summary of the white paper (with questions that councillors might want to consider asking) and published the submission that we made to Ministers ahead of the white paper being published. Both can be found here:
http://www.cfps.org.uk/news/scrutiny-news/health-scrutiny/?id=311
We will be producing a response to all the relevant parts of the consultation (don't forget that as well as 'Equity and Excellence' there are five other papers and a paper dedicated to the Health Watch proposals - this last paper is not on the DH website but I have posted it in the White Paper discussion forum on our site).
OSCs need to consider which parts of which papers they want to comment on (the rhetoric of the main paper does change slightly in some of the subsequent papers - for example about health scrutiny).
I imagine that Leaders and Executives will also be responding to the white paper - are OSCs taking those responses (or evidence from executives) in to account in their responses?
So, I am keen for people to share their thinking with me as this will help inform what we say. I have offered to try to get to any regional network meetings where people are talking about the white paper (e.g. currently I've been invited to the north west and south west networks).
In the main white paper discussion forum I think Steve at Blackpool was suggesting they would be talking to their health colleagues and others in order to get different perspectives on the papers.
Our health accountability forum on 20 September will focus on the white paper -there are some additional places available beyond the usual regional representation. See the story in CfPS news.
RE: health white paper - how are you planning to respond? - Claire Lee - 27-08-2010 08:01 AM
In East Sussex there will be a corporate response from the Executive side which scrutiny will be able to feed views into, but the HOSC will also be able to submit its own response (recognising that its Membership goes beyond the County Council and that there are specific proposals around health scrutiny).
We have two sessions planned in September with senior NHS and Council Managers to discuss the implications and issues arising from the White Paper and to gauge how the local NHS and the Council are planning to respond. These sessions will inform the HOSC response.
As Tim says, we'll need to pick and choose the most relevant bits of the various consultations to respond to and would expect the HOSC response to be more narrowly focused than the corporate response. I'd expect it to focus on the local democratic legitimacy paper (obviously!), plus aspects of the commissioning paper (particularly related to public/patient involvement and accountability) and aspects of the outcomes framework paper. In terms of scrutiny, there is some concern that the proposed set-up of H&WB Boards with residual scrutiny function does not clearly separate decision making and scrutiny, potentially leading to (actual or perceived) conflicts of interest, particularly around major service change.
Timetable has not been helpful of course, given that a lot of key managers and Members have been away for much of August, so it will be a fairly hectic September pulling something together! Be very interested to hear what others are doing...
RE: health white paper - how are you planning to respond? - Steve Sienkiewicz - 27-08-2010 09:44 AM
Earlier this week I met with a Director from our PCT, our local LINks lead and also colleagues from both the Council's Adult Social Care and Corporate Policy.
I'd prepared my own thoughts on responses to some of the questions in advance of the meeting, concentrating on the democratic legitimacy paper. We worked through each of the questions in some detail and reached almost total agreement on what the answers should be. It was a relief that we were all singing from the same hymm sheet.
From the Council's perspective, our Health OSC will consider a draft response to the paper at its next meeting in September. That response will then go forward to be considered as part of the Council's corporate response, but may also be formally submitted separately.
We are also holding a North West regional meeting of health scrutiny officers next month and will be looking to submit a response from that group, assuming that is we reach broad agreement on how to respond.
I'd be happy to share the draft response that is being prepared on behalf of our Health OSC following publication of the agenda papers on 10th Sept. I do however absolutely agree with Claire regarding reservations around the proposed health & wellbeing boards effectively taking over the existing scrutiny functions of Health OSCs in connection with service changes.