www.swyp-unison.org.uk
UNISONnews South West Yorkshire Partnership Health Branch
inside
April 2017
South West Yorkshire Partnership Health
• AGM report 2017 Inspiring meeting • Barnsley May Day Festival of solidarity! • Get active in UNISON
Do you know about our £20 new member offer?
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Gift card
lthough we have over 2700 members we know there are a lot of people out there not yet in a union who really need to be. The Branch is currently running a promotion by which any member who recruits a new member to this branch of UNISON will get a £10 gift card usable at hundreds of stores, and the new member gets a £10 gift card to welcome them to the union too. That’s £20 between you! If you have three or four colleagues not yet in the union you can sign them up and get the £10 per person each time. The only restrictions are that you must be a branch member, the new member must be eligible to join this branch (rather than for example a Council branch) and they must join through an application form sent to the Branch rather than online. Application forms are available from the Branch Office. Just write ‘recruited by’ with your full name and contact details on the new member’s application form to qualify.
• Huddersfield March for the NHS The fight to save HRI continues with a march on Saturday 29th April
• Doncaster Races 5th August 2017 • Branch contacts See back page for all the details
Why is what’s happening to the NHS in Barnsley nationally important?
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here are two big developments that will hit Mount Vernon Hospital first but could end up affecting the whole NHS. First of all an ‘Alliance Contract’ has been formed bringing together South West Yorkshire Partnership FT (SWYPFT), Barnsley Hospitals FT (BHNFT) and the Barnsley Healthcare Confederation (GP Federation) to deliver ‘Intermediate Care’ – care for people who don’t need an acute hospital bed but who require more input than normal community services can provide. These services are currently provided by the two inpatient wards at Mount Vernon and the Hospital at Home and Rapid Response teams based there. The idea of the Alliance Contract is that the current providers get together to provide an integrated service rather than the whole service being put out to tender by the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) The new service model (which it is hoped will be put in place from July ) will have 16% less money for the service and rely heavily on beds in nursing and care homes. The NHS provided in-patient service will drop from two wards to one. Although nothing is finally agreed yet this ward is most likely to be provided at Barnsley
Hospital, meaning Mount Vernon will almost certainly shut this year, with the teams based there moving to health centres, etc., across the borough. There is also a suggestion that people currently working on the two wards at Mount Vernon and the support staff service of the hospital might transfer employer from SWYPFT to BHNFT or even (for support staff) to private contractors. UNISON is concerned at how with a growing elderly population Barnsley CCG think spending 16% less will help bring a better service to the people of Barnsley, and will do all we can to make sure members’ jobs and their position as NHS employees are protected. At the same time the CCG, Barnsley Council, BHNFT, SWYPFT and the GP Federation are forming an ‘Accountable Care Organisation’ (ACO). Barnsley and the other four CCG areas in South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw make up about half of the ‘early adopters’ of these new arrangements nationwide. ACOs will eventually be widespread in the NHS and will oversee community
and mental health services, intermediate care and some other non-specialist in-patient care. The majority of partner organisations in the Barnsley ACO have recently taken the unusual step of asking the GP Federation to host the ACO. Although hosting does not mean employing everyone UNISON is concerned that it is a leading role and that proposals to transfer staff to the host may follow. It is important to note the GP Federation is not an NHS body for employment and contract purposes, meaning it is unclear how it could carry out all the functions of an ACO. UNISON will be following ACO developments closely, but we are concerned that in the long run the community health services our members currently provide could be squeezed between GPs wanting to provide more services in their surgeries and Barnsley Council’s traditional backing for BHNFT (very understandably) to try to keep Barnsley Hospital viable. We are clearly heading into difficult times with Barnsley at the forefront of changes that will eventually affect the whole NHS.