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NHS ..Things must be desperate now !


Frederick
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As a volunteer driver taking NHS  patients to and from hospital most for radio therapy and chemo or dyalisis I of course give my time for free and the NHS reimberses me the cost of my fuel ...I have done this when in the UK for many years now as I like to meet people and feel in the villages of Dorset  / Hampshire I help out people who I know could not get to hospital without the likes of volunteer drivers .The ambulance service just has not got enough staff or vehicles to take  patients who cannot or are advised not to drive themselves and I do this for South Central Ambulance Service ....Last year  at the time our new milage rate was set  and fuel was 20 % cheaper than it is now we were informed that in   order for the Trust to get the new contract to carry the patients for the hospitals it was necessary to take away volunteer drivers subsistance allowance  thus saving  £ 25.000 overall.  Some drivers who are away from home from 8am to after  4pm  were unhappy that the subsistance (meal ) allowance had been withdrawn and raised it at a recent  meeting ....This morning we all got a letter on the subject from the NHS Trust   Quote "Subsistance Allowance  "  "We have been made aware that many of you are not happy with the termination of this allowaance. "   We would suggest the following  

1. The current rate of mileage allowance stays as it is ( Under 1500 cc 40.5 pence per mile . 1500 cc or over the allowance is 42 pence per mile  )

2. The rate of allowance for vehicles under 1500cc becomes 38.5 pence per mile .for those of 1500cc and over the allowance becomes 40 pence per mile  and the subsitance  allowance be    BE REINSTATED as 5 hours or over £3. 15p and 10 hours £6.80.   Each  volunteer can make a personal choice  which way they would like to claim their allowances and the decision cannot be altered except at the start of a new financial year  " So there it is..........  if you want to claim for the cost of a coffee £1 in the hospital canteen .........and a sandwich you can.......... but we will cut the fuel allowance by 2 p a mile  if you do ! .........The trouble is if I decide not to volunteer anymore to do this  which many of us feel like doing..........then we know the community will suffer.......     This sort of thing is called "Man Management " ........or lack of of it .........  is it not !    The milage rate is at the moment about 10p a mile less than the Natiional Joint Council Rate  laid down for Council Workers who use their own cars  at work ....

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I can understand that you may feel hard done by. However, look at it more from the point of view that you have done well in the past and now you are being brought into line with how things are outside the public sector. According to HMRC, 40p per mile is the standard allowance (and it decreases substantially once you claim for more than 10,000 miles). I don't think that has changed in some four or five years. So it looks as if you are being given the choice of keeping your higher allowance, but not being reimbursed for refreshments etc, or keeping the subsistence and going on to the lower allowance that is all the rest of us can claim. I am told that HMRC puts a maximum of £5 per day on subsistence claims for company employees. Of course, you provide your time on a purely voluntary basis so you are free to stop doing that, which must give you all quite a powerful lever.

I suppose the alternative is for the NHS to pay for taxis, and recoup the consequent debt through additional charges to all tax payers, as is done in some other countries.

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I dont really feel hard done by Will..... personally the money is of little consequence ...I am just sad that the NHS should feel that a group of people who freely give their services ...are not " employees " on their pay roll  should be used the way we are ....How can the payment of a few allowances to volunteers come to be of such vital importance that a contract within the working of the huge NHS depends on the price of their meal . As an example of how things have become in the NHS today  I was asked to take an occupational therapist with a patient to her house for an assesment to see if she could be discharged and returned back into her home .. The OT would normally have taken her herself and claimed 52p a mile as she was also needed to  carry equipment which she gets an added  allowance for .  The O.T. told me she had been advised by hospital management not to use her own car in future .. to use the Car Service drivers as "They were cheaper "  You are right Will the alternative is taxi's ....the hospitals have to use them now when a driver cannot be found .....hellish expensive and they hate having to call one .....The thing is in the world of employment people are paid their salery and on top of that they get an allowance if they use their own car at work .....We  obviously dont get a salery just the car allowance ....it would be nice if it was the same one as  enjoyed by the saleried staff ....
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Russethouse, on humanitarian grounds, nobody could disagree with your rant.  But this woman isn't entitled to NHS treatment, has apparently managed to avoid being deported for several years (after she returned to UK following the death of her husband) and generally seems to have been able to get treatment thus far that many other nationals would have been denied.  And how did she access the treatment when she was here illegally?

Humanitarian concerns seem to have been thrown out here by the HO and the letter and spirit of the law applied with great - probably too much - rigour.  That said, she's not at risk in Ghana and had she not been ill, would the media have picked up her case? 

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I certainly don't disagree with what you say Frederick. To me it seems like yet another case where people willing to give time to help are being squeezed out by bureaucracy. Often on Health & Safety, insurance etc excuses, but often more to protect the bureaucrats' own backs as much as anything else. And the NHS (or other British institutions) are far from the only offenders.

Dare I say, with regard to the other story, that "...is being removed from the country... because... she has no legal status... " might look like a dangerous precedent for those who find themselves ineligible to join the state health system, or find other health insurance, when suffering from a serious illness in certain other countries.

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I'll admit first that this may be a unique view, (and I have only read this article, there may be more to it) but a quick google shows that Ghana is still in need of aid of different descriptions. This lady has been a student here so it is to be hoped that she came to the Uk hoping to improve her lot and maybe the lot of other Ghanaians in some way ( I have no idea if this is the case though) So while the Government talks about aid to foreign countries and we see heart rendering appeals for help, when the government actually has a chance to relieve this womans suffering and actually help her (and her children) - they throw her out.

My gut instinct is that it is wrong........I'm sure some one will explain to me why I am wrong though.

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She seems to have done a lot of things wrong, as far as extending her original visa was concerned, any one of which would be likely to confer illegal immigrant status on anybody in normal health. In fact this quote might give a clue: "Her solicitor said she accepted her removal was fair".

But the solicitor goes on to say that "they had made representations on her behalf on compassionate grounds". So they must feel there is some hope. Doctors in Britain are bound by the Hippocratic oath, so nobody would be left to die. However, they would be duty bound to make sure that she is genuinely unable to get treatment in her home country or that this was not an attempt to con the system.

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Frederic

I can see that you and the volunteers feel hard done by but you are doing a great job and I am sure the patients are very grateful. Perhaps one day someone will be there to drive you to and from hospital appointments and maybe they won't be re-imbursed for everything but in the end, what goes around comes around.

[I] I would be tempted to take my own sandwiches and have a hot drink in a flask then claim the full allowance for the petrol. 

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Thanks Cendrillon ......I shall soldier on without the sandwiches !....  it just makes me wonder what sort of NHS we have now that somebody should actually think it is now a good idea to take away from volunteers the cost of a snack that they have been given for years ....They also reduced the amount they give is to cover any mobile phone calls at the same time .....they will give us £2 to cover calls in a 6 day period ...Southampton General NHS Trust spent about a million filling in a fish pond and paving it over.....Health and Safety  issue ? ....
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Frederick

Im sad that you (and many others) should be treated in this way, I needed the use of a hospital driver a few years back for nearly a year after a bad car accident when I couldnt walk or drive, I also had head injuries so must be forgiven for not thinking much about it at the time, for ages if you said do this do that I just did it half the time not knowing why!!!!

I live in a very rural area and he was a life line for me and another lady in my village who was blind and ill, He was funny, cheerful, caring and very helpful, I didnt know he wasnt being paid for what he was doing until well into my treatments when one day the blind lady told , me I was shocked that some one could be so kind , he did a fantastic job, So that following christmas just before I stopped needing him , the other lady and I made him a huge hamper for him and his family, and I wrote a card telling him how much we had both appreicated all he had done ( on the way home from hospital if he had the time he would take the blind lady to tescos to help her with a bit of shopping and would stop to get us a bag of chips from the chippie, its amazing what you miss when you cant get out by your self !![:)]  )  when he read it he cried and said we were the first people to ever say thankyou to him and mean it, he was very touched. I hope you feel your payment comes from people who admire you very much for the time you give others. Good on you [:D]        

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[quote user="Russethouse"]

My gut instinct is that it is wrong........I'm sure some one will explain to me why I am wrong though.

[/quote]

She is an illegal immigrant and has been on and off for some years. If the Home Office had evicted her at the first breach this problem would not have arisen.

John

not

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Thank you for your kind words Pads ......we know the patients appreciate what we do.....its just the NHS magagement we would like occasionally to feel the same ....I often think how strange it is that a  system exists whereby a Consultant  ..on a big salery...a technician highly trained to use a very expensive  scanner in a  million pound specially built unit .....full of nurses and .....receptiionists... has to depend on a bunch of retired unpaid old fogies like us to bring their work to them evry day ...
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[quote user="Frederick"]Thank you for your kind words Pads ......we know the patients appreciate what we do.....its just the NHS magagement we would like occasionally to feel the same ....I often think how strange it is that a  system exists whereby a Consultant  ..on a big salery...a technician highly trained to use a very expensive  scanner in a  million pound specially built unit .....full of nurses and .....receptiionists... has to depend on a bunch of retired unpaid old fogies like us to bring their work to them evry day ...[/quote]Sadly, Frederick, you are in a moral quandary here.  If you all stopped doing what you do, somebody would realise that yours is an essential service and not just a nice little add on for the health service; but, as you said, you aren't going to do that,because you care and that's why you do it in the first place.  The authorities know this, and play on it - it's always the nice people who get shafted first. Good on yer for volunteering.
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Teletext today reported that each and every hospital in the UK would soon have to have a manager in charge of cleaning to a certain standard. They didn't mention a salary, but your guess over £40,000 a year is as good as mine.

Meanwhile, there are now, according to the UK papers and some websites, including teletext, more managers in each UK hospital than nurses. Go figure.

Keep voting Labour though, won't you all.............

And before the usual suspects come on and indulge in silly anti-anti labour rants, I LOATHE the Tories too[;-)]

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[quote user="Frederick"]I shall soldier on without the sandwiches ! ...They also reduced the amount they give is to cover any mobile phone calls at the same time .....they will give us £2 to cover calls in a 6 day period ...Southampton General NHS Trust spent about a million filling in a fish pond and paving it over.....Health and Safety  issue ? ....[/quote]

Frederick, I'm glad you're going to 'soldier' on.  It seems very mean spirited to treat volunteers this way. I can sort of  understand them taking the meal allowance away, but I don't see how the £2 max phone bill can be fair...if you had an accident or the patient you were transporting became very ill, you could easily pass that amount trying to contact people. Is the finace department seriously intent on rejecting claims made due to circumstances like this?  Did they even consult with any volunteers about these changes?

Come on Ford Anglia, give us a hint as to where to find the articles you posted about![:D] (I have tried, I promise).

Some large hospitals are inhabited, and visited, by many thousands of people a day. I'm guessing cleaning up, constantly, after that lot takes some doing. A lot of staff, shifts, and dealing with chemicals and oooh all sorts of  grim things.

I wouldn't want to pay the person who managed all that peanuts.

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Tresco.........The world I was brought up in where I was taught that  people mattered  and we had a duty to look after the less fortunate  is long gone  I feel  ...Today money is King  ...especially as far as the NHS   and their contracts and cash flows are concerned and patients and staff more and more have to fit in with that .

 In a couple of months I shall be opening the shutters  and letting the Vendee spring  winds  waft through my French  home .  I cant wait   after todays letter and the nonsense it contained ........This year France will I suspect be having us  living with her longer  than last . I shall still transport the patients when back  in the UK ... I am a guy who even when retired cant sit still !

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Frederick, while I wasn't brought up to believe in voluntary work, I have always done a lot of it in one way or another.

Try not to be so daunted by these pen pushers. Write a couple of choicely worded letters to try and challenge this decision. Send me the info and I'll do the same.

Of course I wish you all joyous things in France, but there are plenty of other people waiting to step up full time as you've done, as long as they don't have to pay for the priveledge (sp!). 

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Things have been desperate for years in the NHS.

In the case of the hospice where my Mum works, they flattenned the 1980's built unit and have put up a new one that contains LESS beds than the original but MORE office space for the fund-raising staff!   Find the logic in that [:@]

My Mum also nursed a very famous comedian through his last weeks for which he gave her a personally dedicated and autographed copy of his memoirs as a keepsake.  Being busy (staff shortages etc) Mum put the book on the desk until the end of her shift, but when she went back later to collect it someone had taken it, so after asking around a patient said that so-and-so from upstairs took it.   Mum asked this person for her book and the bod from upstairs quoted that "Gifts to staff are NOT allowed, therefore I am taking this for the Hospice Fund or maybe the library if it doesn't sell......."  

So if a memorabilia fan of this particular comedian purchases his memoirs duly dedicated and autographed "To J*****, with my thanks for everything  etc etc etc......." you will know where it came from.   Swiping a gift from a staff member in order to sell it really is scraping the bottom of the barrell.  [:@]

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