Healthy Living

Spent the day on NHS business for the Primary Care Trust. In the morning, I and colleagues met to look at the evidence upon which we can provide assurance about governance under the Standards for Better Health programme. Yes, I know the jargon is irritating – but it’s hard to under-estimate the importance to the health service of being as safe and secure as possible against risk. Indeed there are lessons that the Council could learn about the way in which the NHS have embedded a culture of risk management and assurance throughout the organisation.

At lunchtime I had a lovely bike ride down the canal towpath from Brunel’s famous Three Bridges in Southall to the Fox pub in Hanwell. The Fox is the current CAMRA Pub of the Year, and served up some excellent pints of Timothy Taylor’s Landlord bitter – the premier cru of Yorkshire beers.

In the early evening we held the public AGM of the Primary Care Trust. We’ve been looking for ways to make this a less formal and more informative session, and this year we had a number of stalls staffed by particular professional groups who could talk about their work. I had a really useful chat with the community nursing team about their work with young children and their parents – trying to establish healthy living as early as possible in life. They agreed to let me spend a half day work-shadowing them - I find that I can get a far better feel for the work done at the frontline by spending just a few hours work-shadowing rather than days spent in reading reports.

The AGM broke up into groups to discuss particular aspects of the work of the PCT, and my table had three of the team who run Meadow House – the local hospice, which is located on the Ealing Hospital grounds but managed by the PCT. Meadow House is a very well-loved facility in the Borough – every second or third pub will usually be fundraising for them. I was very interested to hear from them that the majority of people admitted to Meadow House are now subsequently discharged – the stereotype of hospices being predominantly places to die is somewhat out of date. I arranged to visit them next month to learn more about their current work – although I spent a deal of time there as Millennium Mayor, I haven't visited for a couple of years.

Discussion at the Primary Care Trust AGM