Charity challenges NHS decision making process
Possability People will today (Wednesday 17 July 2019) officially challenge the local NHS’s decision to cut its advice centre funding earlier this year.
Attending The Health Overview and Scrutiny Meeting (HOSC), Possability People’s Chief Executive, Geraldine Des Moulins will challenge the way in which Brighton and Hove Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) made the unpopular decision to cut £29,000 from the charity, which resulted in the closure of their specialist disability advice centre.
Geraldine Des Moulins says:
“We do not think that the Clinical Commissioning Group made their decision according to their Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED). Nor do they seem to have paid any attention to their own Equality Impact Assessment.
“We find it difficult, as do our supporters, to understand how commissioners can pretend that there isn’t a link between health and wellbeing, and accessing timely disability advice when people are in crisis and struggling to cope, making this decision hugely short-sighted and counterproductive”.
There has been a huge ground swell of support for the advice centre, illustrated by a petition containing over 3,000 signatures calling for the CCG to reverse its decision.
The CCG’s Equality Impact Assessment states clearly that:
“The effect on both physical and mental health of potentially waiting longer for, or being unable to access, timely advice on benefits, and in waiting for an appeal, may lead to increased pressure on primary care, Adult Social Care and other statutory and voluntary sector services.”
Geraldine continued:
“It is difficult to understand how the CCG can justify cutting the relatively small budget of £29,000 when it will, by their own admission, have such a negative impact on disabled people and impact negatively on hard pressed statutory services. We therefore would ask the HOSC to scrutinise the CCG’s decision making process against the Public Sector Equality Duty and if it does not meet the standard, to work with the CCG to find a solution”.
Ends
Notes to editors
News release in response to initial cut: Shock funding decision closes advice centre for disabled people https://www.possabilitypeople.org.uk/2019/03/26/shock-funding-decision-closes-advice-centre-for-disabled-people/