Find below a record of our live Twitter coverage of the Great Yarmouth & Waveney CCG and Norfolk & Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) public ‘consultation.’
We distributed about 100 copies of an open letter written by NSFT nurses in Norwich caring for people from Great Yarmouth & Waveney which exposes this ‘consultation’ as a sham. Every NSFT and CCG director present was given a copy by hand and from their solemn faces they did not appear to find our exposure of the truth enjoyable reading. The EDP posted a copy of the open letter on its website yesterday.
We held a demonstration before the meeting as well as asking demanding questions of the NSFT and CCG directors. Campaigners travelled from all over the NSFT area, from north Norfolk to south Suffolk. We filled the venue and held a well-attended campaign meeting afterwards which broadened our support in Suffolk and on the coast.
The Operations Director of NSFT continues to attempt to justify further savage cuts to the adult acute inpatient budget on the grounds that forty per cent of the budget is unfairly spent on only two per cent of service users as though this is an example of unfair and wasteful allocation of resources. If we say applied this fatuous ‘thinking’ to midwifery and obstetrics, the Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital would forthwith close its Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) as it would be considered that a disproportionate amount of money was spent on the neonates with the greatest need rather than the ones who popped out on time and promptly went home. Of course, those in greatest need will consume a disproportionate amount of resources and NSFT and its CCG commissioners have statutory obligations to those who may be a risk to themselves or others.
The sham consultation is featured in today’s EDP.
A campaign spokesman was interviewed on BBC Radio Suffolk during the Stephen Foster prime drive-time news interview slot yesterday about the consultation – listen on BBC iPlayer here (skip forward one hour and six minutes).
Our initial consultation response is available here together with links to the official consultation documents.
Now the tweets. Please excuse the typos and predictive text mistakes:
