ESSEX PENSIONER

The journal of the Pensioner’s Action Association-Essex Region

No.1 - SPRING EDITION 2005

Health Secretary John Reid today announced a major overhaul in the way health and social care services will deliver care to the millions of people in England with long-term conditions.

The new changes are designed to improve the health and quality of life of those with long-term conditions, prevent premature death, and reduce the number of times they have emergency visits to hospital.

At the heart of the new system is the 'community matron', a new type of health professional whose role will be to give one-to-one support to the most vulnerable patients with long-term conditions. They will monitor their patient's health and co-ordinate the care and support they need to achieve a better quality of life.

The NHS is committed to having 3,000 community matrons in place by March 2007.

Long-term conditions are those conditions that cannot, at present, be cured, but can be controlled by medication and other therapies. They include diabetes, asthma, and arthritis.

More than 17.5 million people in the UK suffer from one or more long-term conditions. For some people, particularly the most vulnerable, these conditions go unmonitored and unmanaged until a hospital visit becomes necessary. The NHS and social care long-term conditions model will provide the structured care that will keep people out of hospital, and in some cases prevent premature death.

The NHS is working towards a target of reducing by 5% the number of beds used by emergency in-patient admissions over the next three years. This target will back up the new changes announced today. Currently, 10 per cent of patients who stay in hospital for their care account for 55% of hospital stays. Many of these patients have multiple chronic long-term conditions.

NHS and social care organisations will begin implementing the new long-term conditions model from now, adapting it where necessary to meet specific local circumstances. These organisations will:

Assign individual 'community matrons' to the most vulnerable patients with highly-complex multiple long-term conditions - these case managers will monitor their patient's condition, anticipate any problems and co-ordinate all of their care

Establish multi-professional teams that can identify all of the people in their area with a single serious long-term term condition, assess their needs as early as possible, and provide pro-active care before their condition deteriorates.

Educate all people with long-term conditions about their health and encourage them to manage their own care more effectively.

John Reid said:

"Improving the health and quality of life of the millions of people with long-term conditions is a key priority for NHS and social care organisations. As the number of people with such illnesses increases, new ways of working must be developed to better identify when and where help and support is needed. We must provide uniformly excellent care close to home for people who are often vulnerable and in pain.

"There are already some excellent examples of long-term conditions management, but we want to see this excellence spread across the country. The new model of care announced today will provide the NHS with the blueprint to do just that.

'We expect the new long term conditions model to be fully incorporated into the way the NHS and social care deliver care to people with long-terms conditions. This will involve organisational change in some areas, but these changes will be vital to the health of many patients and will ultimately save lives."

General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, Dr Beverly Malone, said:

"Getting services right for people with long term conditions has never been more important, but for some people, a lack of integrated services has limited opportunities to manage or recover from their conditions.

A new electronic booking system for the NHS is on course to be an expensive failure.

A mere 63 Hospital appointments have been booked online against the Government’s target of 205,000 by the end of 2004. The taxpayer has had to foot s £3.3 million bill to keep the system running. This amounts to around £52, 00 per booking, eight times more than the cosy of a hip replacement operation.

A report from the National Audit Office warned that 40% of the country will not get the £196 million electronic booking system by the target date of December this year. It said that a third of Primary Care Trusts do not have plans to deliver it on time and most G>P’s are not in favour of the scheme.

The damming report will embarrass ministers who have made patient choice and electronic booking a key feature of their NHS reforms. Ministers pledged that, by December 2005 patients would be offered a choice of four or five hospitals at the point of referral. Edward Leigh, chairman of the influential House of Commons Public Accounts Committee said: Plans to reform the NHS have been dealt a blow. There has been abysmal progress towards delivering electronic booking of hospital appointments by December 2005.

“There is danger that patient choice will be undermined if full electronic booking is not available”.

Every year, 9.4 million patients are referred to Hospital treatment and the new booking system should enable them to set up an appointment while at the GPs surgery.

An NAO survey of 1,500 GPs found that half knew very little about the Choose and Book system and nearly two-third felt “very or a little negative about it”. The NOA head, said the system will benefit patients but will not be easy to deliver.

“The Dept of Health must take urgent action to inform and engage with GPs about the new arrangements”

In 2002, a Department of Health document said that electronic booking would be implemented by December 2005.

But a spokesman said, the aim was to deliver choice to patients through ether computer systems or telephone bookings.

The Health Minister said that the HOA report confirmed that greater choice would benefit patients and that GPs and Primary Care Trusts were moving in the right direction to achieve this by the end of the year.

Get involved in National Falls Awareness Day on 19 July 2005 and raise awareness by staying fit, healthy and independent into latter life!

Help the Aged is launching the first ever National Falls Awareness Day to be held on 19 July. The theme of the day is “Be strong, be steady” and we are encouraging local organisations to work together to hold events promoting the activities that older people can do to remain independent in later life. Events are already being planned include sessions offering free rye/feet/medicine checks and “have a go” strength and balance exercise classes.

Over 25 key organisations are supporting the day including the Department of Health, Royal College of Nursing, British Geriatric Society and the College of Occupational Therapists.

Register your event now! Find out how by visiting www.helptheaged.org.uk/fallsday. Aver the coming months a list of events planned for the day will be made available online and there will be regular updates for those who register for the event.

For a local action pack containing ideas for events and how to involve the media, publicity materials and falls statistics, please email your postage address to falls@helptheaged.org.co.

The communications watchdog Ofcom, has begun to consult on the proposed switch over order for digital TV, beginning as early as 2008. Under the proposals, the first regions to switch over will be Borders, HTV Wales and West Country. Parts of the country covered by Meridian, Carlton/LWT and Tyne Tees, as well as Ulster, will be among the last to switchover in 2011. After the switchover, analogue TVs will not work without either a freeview set top box or access to a digital service, such as Sky or Cable TV.

Over 2,500 local post office branches throughout the UK have now closed following the Post Office Ltd urban reinvention programme.

Many Pensioners have been disconnected, upset and annoyed by the programme, not least because the consultation exercise was far from perfect. Older people’s protests have rarely been acceded to and the promise of bigger, better and brighter post offices is not much in evidence.

The National Audit Office's recently published report, Financial support for Post Offices, concluded, among other things, that many millions of public money has gone to compensate postmasters for giving up their franchises and precious little has been spent on new investment. While the scope of this report is limited to financial aspects of this issue, it is well worth reading.

The post office watchdog, Postwatch is now checking on 'receiving branches’, branches where investment and improvements were promised and there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that journeys and queues are longer. Help the Aged is represented on Postwatch, so please keep us informed about the situation in your locality.

PENSION CREDIT IN CARE HOMES

Age Concern has produced a booklet as part of its campaign to ensure that residents in care homes are rewarded for savings in line with the aims of the Pension Credit reforms. The current rules mean that the maximum a single person in a care home can keep of their savings credit is £4.65, when the maximum amount of savings credit they might receive is £15.51. Those whose savings are above the limit for savings credit can still keep only £4.65 of their pension income as a 'savings disregard'. The rules as currently applied discriminate against individuals based solely on their residence in care homes. As the savings credit element of Pension Credit was designed by Government to reward people who had made provision for their retirement, where they live should be irrelevant. Age Concern proposes that the rules should be changed to allow people to keep up to £15.51 on top of their personal expenses allowance, regardless of whether they get the savings credit.

STAYWARM-reader’s letter

Many thanks for your telephone call of today and, as suggested, I am writing to advise of the service that I received from Staywarm. My husband and myself live in a small 3 bedroom bungalow (one room being in the loft) and in August 2001 changed our energy supplier to Staywarm at the rate of £38.37 per month. Having been assured that any rise would be no more than 10% each year, whether you used gas & electricity, or just electricity, I was more than pleased to sign with them. I was therefore extremely angry to receive notification that in August 2002 my bill would rise to £49.00 per month. My neighbour, who lives in a 2 bedroom bungalow, received an increase of only £3.00. Despite telephoning on several occasions, I could get no reasonable explanation (apart from the price of gas increasing) as to why there should be such a difference in payment.

In August 2003 my bill rose to £52.40 a month (a much more reasonable increase) but in August 2004 my bill again rose to £59.00 (all but a few pence). In all, a total rise of £20 approximately in 3 years. According to the article in the magazine, rises, if any, were no more that 1%

After telephoning yet again and receiving no satisfaction, last September I decided to switch suppliers. I have made no attempt to change my habits regarding the use of energy as I do not consider that I have abused the system (apart from the luxury of the occasional use of an old tumble dryer), and having just received my first bill find that after comparing payments to Staywarm and my new supplier, I have saved approximately £20 already, despite paying £16 a month less and yes, I know that there will be increases with this supplier, but at least I will know exactly what I am paying for . Whilst I am sure that there are people who definitely benefit from the Staywarm scheme, I feel that the information given by them is somewhat misleading and it is worthwhile investigating other suppliers.

Mr President, Ladies and Gentlemen, all fellow residents of the European Union, I stand before you today because Houses cannot speak, and Property does not pay Council Tax, it is people who pay taxes. It is lamentably obvious that UK Government funding which had, until 1997 been raised by Income Tax, would in future be supplemented by Council Tax. This all because the current Government promised not to raise or increase the rate of income tax in their Election Manifesto. 60% of pensioners are on low income and thereby exempt from Income Tax, but all pensioners are liable for Council Tax. There is a point beyond which the well-off may not be taxed, using Council Tax to raise the shortfall of Income Tax forces pensioners and the low-paid to subsidise the more affluent. We are socially excluded.

That the existing system of collecting Council Tax is way out of balance there can be no doubt, for above all else Council Tax must be based upon the ability to pay from current income and excluding savings, at the moment in the UK, it clearly is not. In 1996 my Council Tax stood at £540.10p, in 2004 I was billed at £ 1,061.36p., an increase of 96.5%. Over the same period the combined pensions of my wife and myself have risen overall by just 16% . Up to one and a half weeks pension per month can go straight out of pocket, and into Local Government coffers, by way of Council Tax. Could you afford to be dealt with in a similar manner? On our low pension it could ultimately prove terminal, for figures released by the UK General Medical Council in November 2003, revealed that four out of every ten pensioners admitted into UK hospitals, are suffering from mal-nutrition.

I argue that the policy of the UK government towards pensioners is causing Social exclusion of our senior citizens, for just how much Social Inclusion can one enjoy on a basic State Pension of £79.60p. per week? When that is decimated by Council Tax for one and half weeks out of four, one is "really living it up" on less than £55 per week, we are absolutely and totally socially excluded.

The pensioner has got any rights to combat this unfair tax, no right of appeal against its unfairness (except against the Band we are placed in), no right to with hold payment, no right to put an injunction in to the council which might preclude an excessive rise.

The only right we have is to pay up, whatever rate our councils may set. If they indulge in a spending spree, we are obligated to pay the ante.

In his Autumn Statement, our Chancellor directed the main thrust of his proposals on child-care, and easing the burden of this on young parents, enabling a greater degree of social inclusion to them, up to £400 per family weekly. I ask you to think how does this relate to a single persons pension of £79.60p per week Significantly, at no point in his deliberation of this help did he mention "Means- Testing" in association with this aid, yet many thousands of "High-earners" have more than ample without this assistance. We remain the only section of our community subjected to the injustice and humility of "means-testing", our life-savings are being slowly, but systematically, extracted from our possession (EU articles 11.17 and 11.25)" and we have totally no protection from this which is within the law of the UK, and no right of appeal. It can be claimed that "means-testing" is one of the only growth- Industries within the UK at this time, but together with age-linked allowances, it causes unrest between generations (Article 3.3. paragraph 2), and abuses Article 11.25 in its entirety. We are Socially Excluded, because the longer one lives, the deeper goes the effect of UK government policy.

At this point may I respectfully remind you that the UK government has been the fiercest opponent of the European Unions competence in the Social Chapter, particularly in regard to pensioners, and I have no doubt that they will continue in a similar vein if returned to office. Through the UK Commissioners they will even try to influence Europe to adopt a similar stance on pensions thro ughout Europe.. Please remember that should you survive, then you too will become a pensioner. The fate of your nation’s pensioners is in your own hands now, just as surely as our nation’s fate is in your hands to-day. Can you afford to let us continue to lose out?- for what is lost to-day will never be restored. The acid-test is right here and now. Have the courage and conviction which could safeguard both your tomorrow and our to-day, by supporting the UK pensioners cause, tell our Government that reform of their stance is both imp erative and urgent. Property does not pay Council Tax, it is people who pay taxes.

Now pensions and pensioners are coming under pressure in many other countries across Europe. It is my fear that to-days hearing could well initiate a watershed of cut-backs for pensioners in other areas of the Union, should any form of encouragement be shown by this Committee towards the UK stance on the issues we are now discussing...May God forbid. In closing I ask you to consider all of these problems against Articles 11.17-11.25- and 3.3. paragraph 2 of the Constitution for Europe. I ask on behalf of all the signatories of the petition, all of the bodies and persons who have written to the EU in support, and all of the low-paid and pensioners from whom I have had verbal and written support, in particular the "isitfair" campaign which, by the way is endorsed by the Royal British Legion, and is the principal body contesting Council Tax related problems in branches throughout the UK, .I thank the European Union for giving me the opportunity to express the views put fo rward for consideration to-day, and I thank this Committee for its kind indulgence.

PETITIONS COMMITTEE, PUBLIC HEARING - EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT,BRUSSELS

On Monday 17th January 2005 Mr Tony Constable (Colchester, Essex) Petitioner and member of the Isitfair Campaign Group attended the public hearing; he was accompanied by Mr Brian Jaye, (Dorset) als o a member of the Isitfair Campaign Group. The above petition was item 12 on the agenda, the hearing commenced 1656 hrs; it was chaired by Mr Libicki from Poland, who was attended by Mr David Lowe (Head of Secretariat, Petitions Committee). &n bsp; The hearing was opened by the Chairman, who then requested Mr Tony Constable to address the committee and sitting MEP’s (copy of address already circulated) on finishing his address, the Chairman request that the Commissioners case to be heard, a Ms. Antonia Pediadidikati -DG Ta: Commissioners (similar to our high ranking civil servant) who stated that this petition should be closed, as it was the responsibility of individual nation states to be responsible for pensions and taxation recommendation was supported by Mr Michael Cashman -New Labour MEP said that within the allowance system e.g. minimum income guarantee pension credit etc. backed by means testing, an answer was available to pensioners regarding all points made by petitioner.

Mr Libicki then advised the committee that a supportive petitioner, Mr. Jaye would address the committee (copy of address already circulate) on completion of this address Mr Cashman responded by informing Mr Jaye, that he did not accept the remark quote, " spin their web of deceit about Council Tax " he was very un-happy about this, and it showed, then went into over-drive informing us what the UK Government had done for pensioners, he also mentioned the present review being carried out not by name but it was apparent he was referring to the Lyons Review. The chairman invited responses from the elected MEPs present, at this stage a Mrs Sbarbati -Italian MEP (Liberal) addressed the committee, stated quote, " the item (Petition 1287/2003) should not be close, but referred to onward consideration by The Committee for Soc ial Affairs, and remain open to input by The Committee on Petitions, there is a case to be addressed and The Committee on Petitions must not over-rule the right for this to be heard by rightful body concerned, which is Committee for Social Affairs, the petitioners had said so much it had to mean something."

Her remarks were endorsed by a male Spanish MEP in total support of remarks and feelings. Mr Cashman again tried to encourage closure.

This was a victory and was recognised as such by Mr Geert De Cock - Policy Officer of Age (European Older Peoples Platform) who met us after the meeting. He stated quote, "That similar petitions would un-questionably follow from other nations within Europe, he personally ensured that Estonia will be submitting and he knew of four other nations, who would be doing likewise.