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Give your views on the issues that matter to you. Sheffield LINk is committed to supporting you to give your views on a range of health and social care issues. We try to gather as many local and national consultations here as we can find. These consultations need your views if they are to be as effective as possible. While we include all relevant consultations we find out about on this site, we may miss some. If you know of something related to health and social care services in Sheffield or nationally that people may be interested in but not shown here please contact us. Local consultationsPotential closure of intermediate care resource centres Hazelhurst and SevenfieldsHazelhurst and Sevenfields are homes that between them provide 42 intermediate care beds for people aged 65 and over. Poeple usually stay for a short period of rehabilitation, usually 6 weeks. The beds are paid for by the NHS SHeffield (NHSS) but some funding also comes from Sheffield City Council (SCC) and the future of the homes was reviewed jointly The draft proposal is 'to stop having the 42 beds at Sevenfields and Hazelhurst and use the money to buy alternative care to meet current needs based on demand' and this would include providing intermediate care in nursing homes'. There is brief information in this letter to stakeholders or click here to see the full report from SCC and NHSS . You can have your say in a number of ways:
Closing date: 29 February 2012 Click here to see all current and recently finished NHS Sheffield consultations. National ConsultationsHealthWatch FundingThe Department of Health has now reissued a consultation on funding for local HealthWatch, two weeks after it was forced to withdraw it. The original consultation on the government’s flagship patient and public involvement strategy was issued without being shown to the programme board or advisory group. It upset volunteers as it appeared to suggest a local Healthwatch branch could be run for as little as £20,000. LINks, which will be replaced by HealthWatch from October 2012, cost an average of £100,000 a year to run. The new consultation makes clear £20,000 is the minimum additional funding local authorities will get on top of the £27m money they get to run LINks in order to pay for extra duties HealthWatch will have around signposting and influencing local health policy and commissioning. Most of the extra £23m a year will come from primary care trust patient advice and liaison services. The consultation sets out two options for the distribution of funding, proportionate either to the size of the working age population or to the need for state-supported social care. Under both methods a further adjustment is proposed to fund the minimum spend for smaller local authorities, such as the Isles of Scilly and Rutland, by taking some money off larger areas. Councils receive money for LINks through the Department for Communities and Local Government formula grant which is agreed until 2014-15. However, it is not ringfenced and a report by the National Association of LINks Members found only six out of 150 had escaped budget cuts in 2010-11. Click here to open the HealthWatch Consultation . Closing date for the consultation: October 24 White paper on the future of the NHS and LINks (now closed)See our Health White Paper summary for more information on the Government's White Paper on the future of the NHS 'Equity and Excellence: liberating the NHS'. The first consultation closed on October 11 2010 and Sheffield LINk sent in responses. Further consultations related to the White Paper are listed above. Click here to see all current and finished Department of Health consultations and any responses Recent Consultations |