Select Committee on Health Written Evidence


112. Evidence submitted by Susan Booth (PPI 94)

LOCAL INVOLVEMENT NETWORKS

  1.  The name means nothing. For the past ten years I have received two newsletters from local organisations called LINK. Away for Christmas I found a weekly one.

  2.  The Community Health Councils and the PPI Forums both drew people from local organisations. The North Staffs PPI Forum now includes two previous forums each with different branches of the "local" organisations. Are all branches to be included/recognised?

  3.  How is this unwieldy body of people to be organised to work? Some of the PPI Forums now are too big to organise their work properly. Talking to members of other PPIFs it would appear their ability to work often depends on the quality of the Administrative Support they are (or are not) given by the FSOs. Can Local Authorities give this support? Para 1.27 of "Government Response to "A Stronger Local Voice" (Gateway Reference 7283) hardly seems workable when there is more than one local authority involved. And a county authority may have to work with more than one LINk.

  4.  Since I understand there are some Councillors who have no idea what they should be doing at the moment, it is going to take some really good communication to explain LINk to everyone who is going to be involved, much less to the general public.

  5.  As they stand the PPI Forums could work (should be working) with other organisations—the simple way to involve them would be to co-opt one representative to the PPIF. They need not be CRB passed. They would bring their situation and requirements to the Forum and help on working groups (as I understand some Fora do already).

  I am 75 years old and I have lost count of the times where Senior "Management" have brought in changes which look good from the top but as they haven't looked thoroughly at what happens at the bottom before bringing in the changes, work has stalled while people learn how to work in the new (and often not better, easier or more effective) way.

Susan N Booth

North Staffordshire PPI Forum (comments are made as an Individual)

10 January 2007





 
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