Following on from some of the Campaign members meeting MPs and Minister Maria Caulfield at Portcullis house, there have been some movements.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-68619504 – explains the Minister Maria Caulfield’s reaction after the meeting.
Even though NSFT keeps claiming it is on a journey of improvement, by April, none of the ministers nor governors nor campaigners had seen this improvement plan. Until in May there were both meetings with Government and some Campaign members. At the cross-party government scrutiny meeting these were more detailed, as the campaign was just given a ‘comms’ presentation especially made for the campaign, which just set out language that people would want to see, with no ways of how and why these plans would be implemented or sustained. We are still awaiting these plans and will keep holding them to it. NSFT were urged by George Freeman to meet with us, for the purpose of giving real experiences and sharing concerns, not to explain the plans, we hope to hear them at the next meeting.
Both Freeman MP and Maria Caulfield discussed amongst members of parliament with concerns that the area covered by the trust of two counties were just far too large, yet also expressing it would cost too much time and money to split it again. Mark Harrison, Chair of the Campaign, demanded a statutory public inquiry to not only get answers about NSFT but also to help other trusts around the country and mental health provision nationally. He described the deaths crisis at NSFT as just out of control and the campaigners expressed concerns about the most recent CQC rating from ‘Inadequate’ to ‘requires improvement’ and its validity.
Getting straight answers and being able to see papers and plans proved to be difficult for both the campaign and the parliamentary members, but things started to move forward in May and then…..
The GENERAL ELECTION was called…..
We hope to hear from the standing MP’s during this election period how invested they are in their constituents lives, in safe, effective and transparent mental health provision, in fighting against defensiveness and protecting reputation within the NHS and whether or not they are interested in holding institutions and people in power to account, especially after the emerging and damning report from the Infected Blood Scandal released in May 2024.
Photo credit, taken from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-68619504 article, from BBC 01/06/24