Government Destroying NHS Direct Services

UNISON members in the South West are taking action to highlight the threat to the services provided by NHS Direct.  Nursing and Health advisors providing the NHS Direct helpline services to Cornwall and the South West based at Exeter are today, Tuesday 1 May, holding a ‘work-in’ in protest against the Government’s plans to replace NHS Direct.

From midnight last night until to midnight tonight NHS Direct staff in Exeter are having a ‘work-in’, with extra staff are voluntarily coming in, in their own time to help staff the NHS Direct phone lines in a protest to the forthcoming changes from NHS Direct to the new 111 services, which will result in clinical staff losing their jobs and a reduction in clinical service provision.

Devon NHS children's services set for privatisation

Taken from the Guardian

Core children's health services in Devon may be about to be privatised in a move that critics have warned is a foretaste of the breaking up of the NHS that, they say, will take place when the government's health and social care bill becomes law.

The Guardian has learned that NHS Devon and Devon county council have shortlisted bids led by two private, profit-making companies – Serco and Virgin Care – to provide frontline services for children across the county, including some of the most sensitive care for highly vulnerable children and families, such as child protection, treatment for mentally ill children and adolescents, therapy and respite care for those with disabilities, health visiting, and palliative nursing for dying children.

Also on the shortlist for the £130m three-year NHS contract is Devon Partnership NHS Trust, bidding along with Barnado's and other local charities. But a source close to the process, which is now in its fourth and final stage, has told the Guardian that one of the two commercial companies' bids looks likely to win the tender.