Society daily 15.11.11

Sign up to Society daily email briefing Today's top SocietyGuardian stories • NHS watchdog faces investigation as concerns mount over patient care • Healthcare regulator comes under fire • Senior civil servants to strike over pensions • 124 Sure Start centres have closed since coalition took power • Southern Cross to complete care home transfer before Christmas • Rise in use of cocaine has peaked, says EU drug agency report • Home Office rebuked for 'highly selective' briefing on drugs seizures • Blackpool bucks library cuts trend with £3m upgrade • Doctors bickering over NHS shakeup are 'neglecting' young heart patients • Gemma Hayter case review finds chances were missed to protect her • Eric Allison: Frankland prison has been found guilty • The day Dad attacked Mum with an axe All today's SocietyGuardian stories In tomorrow's SocietyGuardian pages • What has prompted Richard Branson to encourage his Virgin group of companies to employ ex-ofenders and rioters? Erwin James reports • The care sector needs cash, not lawsuits, argues David Brindle • North and south are set to drift further apart , warns Peter Hetherington • The only way to change an offender is from within, writes Mark Johnson • Mary O'Hara meets Terry Waite , 20 years on from his release • Britain in Bloom is not all about pretty villages. The campaign does wonders for community cohesion, writes Rachel Williams • Why Vietnam leads the way on public sector efficiency Other news • BBC: Charity warns over young runaways • Children & Young People Now: Payment-by-results plan for YOTs is shelved • Community Care: Councils fail to keep figures on missing children in care • Independent: Banker behind private hospital revolution pledges patient power • Inside Housing: Housing association to slash pay for care staff • Localgov.co.uk: Ministers set out funding to support council tax freeze • Public Finance: UK 'should boost growth sectors and slow cuts' • Telegraph: Surge in youth unemployment in 'honest' figures • Third Sector: NCVO urges Maude to devote Big Lottery Fund entirely to voluntary sector On my radar ... • Pat's Petition. Carer Pat Onions, who is herself blind, has submitted an e-petition to the government , calling for a halt to cuts to benefits and services , which are "falling disproporionately on disabled people, their carers and families". Her petition says: The government were embarking on wholesale reform of the benefit system when the economic crisis struck. These welfare reforms had not been piloted and the plan was to monitor and assess the impact of the new untried approach as it was introduced in a buoyant economy. Unfortunately since then the economy has gone in to crisis and the government has simultaneously embarked on a massive programme of cuts. This has created a perfect storm and left disabled people/those with ill health, and their carers reeling, confused and afraid. We ask the government to stop this massive programme of piecemeal change until they can review the impact of all these changes, taken together, on disabled people and their carers. We ask the government to stand by its duty of care to disabled people and their carers. At the moment the covenant seems to be broken and they do not feel safe. Illness or disability could affect any one of us at any time, while many more of us are potential carers. If the petition gets 100,000 signatures, it could generate a debate in parliament. Support for the petition has come from the National Housing Federation, Carers UK, the Broken of Britain campaign group and Disability Alliance. • A trio of responses to the takeover of Hinchingbrooke hospital in Cambridgeshire by Circle Health. On his blog, Craig Dearden Phillips says the takeover should be celebrated : Surely it's a time to set aside our ancient anxieties about risks and try new providers like Circle? Remember, there is nothing 'safe' in a failing NHS hospital which is losing money, probably causing more harm than it should and on the brink of closure. And there are savings to make, there always are. People who don't deal much with the NHS don't realise how god-awful much of the management practice is, how 1970s it all is internally and just how much scope there is for savings. I have seen it all first hand and much of it is quite repellent: brutal, authoritarian, super-bureaucratic and self-interested. If Circle can raise standards, balance the books and raise productivity then their staff and investors are welcome to a profit. David Floyd, of the Beanbags and Bullsh!t blog , is more cautious: Given that their contract hasn't started yet, it's too soon to say what impact Circle Health will have on Hinchingbrooke hospital. Previous experiences of private managment of public services (such as local education authorities) suggest that the most passionate predctions on both sides of the argument – from supporters that private managers have a magical insight into the running of public services that public managers couldn't possibly imagine, from critics that private managers will put service users in danger with nefarious acts of amoral profit-maximising inhumanity – usually prove to be incorrect. As an organisation on the social enterprise spectrum – it's probably safest to avoid a tighter definition than that – Circle Health offers a new approach to managing healthcare. I'm not quite as optimistic as Craig Dearden-Phillips but, for me, the fact that Circle is backed by private money, and majority controlled by the people who put up that money, is not enough of a reason to dismiss the model before it's been given a chance. And on his Health Matters blog, former Labour health policy adviser Paul Corrigan has examined both the politics and the procedure of the takeover, concluding: I am sure the Secretary of State would rather have a set of outcomes which involved public sector FTs taking over failing NHS hospitals, but because both this and the previous Governments have been anxious about the whole process they have extended it, and made it so tortuous that only private sector organisations have either the capacity or the stamina to see it through. Most of the 30 months, and millions of pounds, the takeover process at Hinchingbrooke have taken has been wasted because both the previous and present Governments have been anxious about continuing down the path they had chosen. • A debate on the Shiny World blog about a new app that allows content from council websites to be imported en masse and displayed on Facebook - but without any interactivity. Blogger loulouk says her post prompted discussion on Twitter around whether: a) the content being there where the eyeballs were was good enough, no interactivity was required b) the content being there was a complete waste of time and money and all that content could have been linked to c) the content wouldn't feed into peoples feeds so no one would ever know if a change had been made so what was the point? d) Facebook is where the eyeballs are, for some people it is all there is to the internet and we should pander to them and duplicate content there because if we don't we're excluding those people e) duplicating content to the prima donnas who refuse to go anywhere else costs money - people need to JFGI f) should local government ethically be encouraging people to use only Facebook with the accompanying potential alleged privacy and data protection issues g) the irony of putting none interactive content on a platform completely revolving around interactivity killed them • An excellent Comment is free post by Rachel Surtees, a manager at a London based NHS mental health foundation trust, which asks Who exactly are the 'bureaucrats' wrecking the NHS? She writes: If you listen to Andrew Lansley, you'd be forgiven for believing there is a whole cohort of nameless, faceless bureaucrats who have recklessly brought about the ruin of the NHS and created a situation that can now only be solved by wholesale top-down reform. The image of the middle-management bureaucrat has been so successfully crafted that no one has stopped to challenge it – it was an easy line to sell, a meaningless buzz word that can be relied upon to provoke an appropriately indignant response. But who actually are the bureaucrats? And what's more, when did bureaucracy become a dirty word? • An interesting piece of research by Grainger plc, the UK's largest listed residential landlord, which found that in 15 years' time, more people are expected to be renting than owning their homes . Grainger's executive property director, Nick Jopling, said: There is a new housing reality dawning on Britain: the financial crisis has tightened mortgage lending; house prices continue to be uncertain; and, frankly there are simply too few homes for the demand. In such an environment, renting is becoming an increasingly popular alternative due to the greater flexibility, added financial stability and quality accommodation on offer. More and more people are renting with many considering renting as an important stepping stone in housing tenure. Young people now consider renting as a step towards home ownership and for as much as 92% of young people it is seen as the only way they can move out from their parents' homes. (thanks to Jules Birch for the link) • Barnet council , which has issued a statement following on from the allegation that the authority wants to censor and criminalise bloggers (as quoted in yesterday's Society daily ): The council was concerned that an individual had used information gathered by the FOI process and linked this with other information to ridicule and abuse individual members of staff. The council consulted with the ICO as to whether this constituted a possible breach of the Data Protection Act. The ICO asked the council to make a formal submission, stating this was a currently a grey area. It should be stressed that the individuals about which the council were concerned were not part of the council's senior management team. The council does not tolerate the abuse or bullying of any of its staff. On the Guardian Professional Networks • Jonathan Jenkins explains why new guidance that allows charities to invest in ways that directly further their charitable aims is a seismic shift in the social investment market • The voluntary sector needs our new jargon-busting website , says Andy Gregg from the Charities Evaluation Service • How can we design new homes that really offer affordable living ? • How to get ahead in... NHS HR Events and seminars Making your multimedia content work for you Are you using multimedia content as effectively as you can to get your stories seen and heard? This session, in partnership with sounddelivery, will bring together experts and real case studies to ensure you have the vision, strategy and practical know-how to maximise the opportunities at hand. 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