Happy Anniversary
The Newsletter has reached its Silver Anniversary – this is the start of volume (ie year) 25 ! I hope you find it of interest. There is quite a long article about CCGs (Clinical Commissioning Groups). Please take the time to read this carefully as it is intended to give you information about how you can influence the services provided locally by the NHS.
Did you know …
· Rushmoor Voluntary Services runs a homehelp scheme for light housework and shopping aimed at keeping people in their own home for as long as possible. Despite being run by Rushmoor, they do provide this service over a wider area to include Fleet, Church Crookham, Hawley, Yateley, Blackwater and adjoining areas as well as Farnborough itself. You need to be referred by your GP, social services or a district nurse in order to access this service. For more details, go to http://www.rvs.org.uk/homehelp/
· Dialling 999 in an emergency is a familiar idea. Please be aware that you can also use 112 to get through to the 999 service. 112 might be the better choice from a mobile phone as, even if your own network would give you a weak or non-existent reception, one of the others will automatically kick in to make your connection. It is the more reliable way to make the emergency call from a mobile. Also 112 can be used in any EU country to link to emergency services. (Note : please do not confuse this with 111 which is the NHS telephone service for urgent but non-life-threatening conditions. 111 is NOT equivalent to 999)
Tuesday meetings
Our September meeting was a presentation from a volunteer with St John Ambulance who talked us through key ideas on First Aid. She was a really engaging speaker who gave clear and sensible advice. I wouldn’t like to try to summarise all of that here but I would like to emphasize the gist of one of her main messages which is as follows. You might not feel able to carry out some of the procedures ; CPR for example involves getting down on your knees and is really demanding to do especially as you should keep going until paramedics arrive to take over. You might not be able to do this yourself – but you CAN tell someone else what to do ! If you are into using apps on your smart phone or tablet, then there is a St John Ambulance app you can download which would act as a reminder of what to do if an emergency arose.
She also spoke about helping someone who is choking. I’ve checked on the St John Ambulance website to confirm her advice which is that the simplest step is to make the person bend over, supporting their upper body with one arm and then give up to five sharp back blows between their shoulder blades with the heel of your hand. When the instructions says “sharp blows”, it does mean just that! It will probably hurt your hand and the person’s back but it is necessary to resolve the problem. For more details and reminders, go to www.sja.org.uk
In October, our speaker was Susan Tresman who is, amongst other roles, a member of the Surrey Heath Clinical Commissioning Group and her talk included some information about CCGs. You can read more about them in a later article.
November : Alayne Keen, a friend of Chris and Peter Edwards, talked us through her ingenious but effective “memory board”. It relies on simple, clear images representing actions such as “take tablets” which can be attached via Velcro to a piece of stiff card or equivalent alongside the relevant times of day. One family member would set this up at the start of the day; the person using it would just have to remove the picture once he or she had done that action. A glance at the board would then be enough to remind them what they had done and what they still needed to do and when. If reminders through a day are not required, it can easily be adapted to just show key events during the week. Alayne kindly sent me all the images she uses. Please get in touch if you would like copies. The memory board works best if everything is laminated and we do now have a laminator to borrow.
December was our Christmas meal. We were again able to bring in caterers who provided an excellent meal. Janet Sturt had arranged for a choir to join us and that made a lovely addition to the event. Janet also took the trouble to bring in decorations and balloons for the room. Thank you to Janet, and to Alan McMichael who generously provided the liquid refreshments! We also had an enormous raffle with several guests bringing prizes with them. It was so big we ran out of space for displaying the prizes ! - and unfortunately overlooked two or three when we were making the draw. I do apologise to those people who were kind enough to donate those. They will make their way into one of our other Tuesday evening raffles.
Goodbye to …
· Susan Stewart who has done such an excellent job as the Information and Support Worker in the Surrey area. Susan sent us this message on her retirement :
By the time you read this message, I shall have retired from my position as Information and Support Worker with Parkinson’s UK. May I take this opportunity to thank you all for the help and support I have received during my time working at the charity. I have really enjoyed the past five and a half years, the friends I have made, the clients who have made my job so enjoyable and the memories that will stay with me.
I understand that my post has been advertised so a replacement will soon be in place. In the meantime please use the Parkinson’s UK Advisory Service on Telephone 0800 800 0303.. Whilst I look forward to my retirement, I shall miss you all. May I wish you every happiness for the future.
With kind regards, Susan Stewart
· And to our driver Ken : Ken has done the Camberley pick-up run for many years now. Once a month he has been giving up a whole evening to collecting members and then getting them back home safely. I dread to think what time he himself gets home after dropping everyone off, returning the minibus and picking up his own car.
Our second ever Barn Dance took place at St Mark’s Church Hall in Farnborough in October. We had been a bit unlucky with the date we chose as several people who would otherwise have come were away then. Despite being a bit down on numbers, we still had an excellent and very enjoyable evening. The best recommendation for it was from one member who was somewhat immobilised following a fall. She also has a dietary condition which means she cannot eat the Fish and Chips which were included in the ticket price. So, even though she was not able to dance or enjoy the food, she was still the first person to place her ticket order!
Stay in touch - request for email addresses
We are setting up a mailing list of email addresses so that we can keep you in touch with information that comes in to us, mainly from National Office, between Tuesday meetings and between Newsletter postings. If you would like to be included on this mailing list, please let me know at I send notifications out by “blind copy” so that the other recipients cannot see your address.
Clinical Commissioning Groups : sounds boring but they are important!
What are they ?
The following is extracted from a Wikipedia description of CCGs. I think it is an accurate summary of them and is certainly considerably better than I could manage in my own words.
Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) are NHS organisations set up by the Health and Social Care Act 2012 to organise the delivery of NHS services in England. To a certain extent they replace primary care trusts (PCTs). CCGs are clinically led groups that include all of the GP groups in their geographical area. The aim of this is to give GPs and other clinicians the power to influence commissioning decisions for their patients.
Clinical commissioning groups work with patients and healthcare professionals and in partnership with local communities and local authorities. CCGs operate by commissioning (ie buying) healthcare services including:
· Elective hospital care
· Rehabilitation care
· Urgent and emergency care
· Most community health services
· Mental health and learning disability services
Clinical leads and why they matter to us
By attending a general meeting and then the AGM of the North Hants and Farnham CCG, I’ve realised that the members of the CCG have various roles and this includes the idea of having a “clinical lead” who as the name suggests takes a special interest in one particular area. At the AGM we were able to submit questions and these were then answered on their website. I asked if there was a clinical lead for neurological conditions. The answer (slightly edited by me) was :
“We have a … GP lead for planned care... We do not, at present, have a dedicated clinical lead for neurological conditions, but we will review if evidence demonstrates that this is required.”
Guess who is best placed to provide the evidence – yes, it is us !
How to have your say
All GP surgeries should now have Patient Participation Groups, intended to make the views of patients known to the doctors. The more of us who join these, the stronger our voice will be. You can also make your views known directly to our CCG. These can either be concerns, complaints or compliments. It is important that they know what is going well and not just what is going wrong.
For the North East Hants and Farnham CCG, the contact details are
Telephone: 01252 335085 Email:
Postal address :Quality Team, North East Hampshire and Farnham CCG, Aldershot Centre for Health Hospital Hill, Aldershot, GU11 1AY.
For the Surrey Heath CCG, the contact details are
Telephone 01276 707572 Email
Postal Address : Surrey Heath CCG, Surrey Heath House, Knoll Road, Camberley
Surrey GU15 3HD
For the Guildford and Waverley CCG, the contact details are :
Telephone 01483 405450 Email : this must be done via an online form (sorry!)
Postal address : NHS Guildford and Waverley CCG, 3rd Floor, Dominion House, Woodbridge Road, Guildford, GU1 4PU
This last CCG’s website includes this comment : “Please take the time to tell us about your good experiences with our services. We need to capture this information in order to ensure good practice stays in place.”
Healthwatch
The Healthwatch organisation is another route for you to “have your say”. Their main website gives their overall aim as follows:
“Healthwatch England is the national consumer champion in health and care. We have significant statutory powers to ensure the voice of the consumer is strengthened and heard by those who commission, deliver and regulate health and care services.”
Each county has its own Healthwatch group and website which gives details about how you can submit comments.
Congratulations and thank you to …
· Mairi Cronshaw and her friends who play a major part in promoting the annual concert by the Farnborough Concert Band of the Royal British Legion at the Prince’s Hall, Aldershot. This year half of the profits when to the National Office of Parkinson’s UK - £3200 !
· Everyone who helped out at the Morrison’s collection in Southwood. It raised £318. Special thanks to Sheila Pearse who organised everyone and spent most of the day over there.
Branch exercise classes
Please note the new timings for both the exercise classes which the branch puts on.
· Exercise to Music with Mike Edwards at St George’s Church Hall, Badshot Lea is now on Thursdays, starting at 1pm.
· Seated exercise class at Ancells Farm Community Centre is now starting at 2:45pm on Tuesdays. Susan Braganza, the group leader, is not at the moment well enough to take the class and we have had to change the time slightly to allow a replacement to stand in. We wish Susan all the best in her recovery.
I am sorry to have to give the news that Richard Teakle and John Richardson have died. We send our condolences to both families.
My apologies …
for 2 mistakes on my quiz. One was obvious and I don’t think caused any confusion. This was q66 “Last Liberal PM” . The letters for this should have been 5,6. The other mistake was on q37 about the apple. The letters for this should have been 6 (not 5). This should now be an easy question!
It’s that time of year again …
when my thoughts turn to the AGM in March and the election of the committee. Please consider if you would like to help us out. It is a very rewarding experience and vital to the life of the branch. We meet on the first Wednesday of each month from 7:15 at Shawfields. There is no need to feel committed to every single meeting, though it would be good if you could make it to about half of them.