It seems to me that many have missed the point on this fiasco.
As a member of the steering group that set it up the Norwich Walk in Clinic, I am appalled at the miss information that has been allowed to go unchallenged particularly by local Conservative politicians in Thorpe St Andrew where the Clinic is situated.
Norwich Walk in Clinic
As one of the Labour Government’s new initiatives the original concept was and remains sound. That is to make the simpler but important medical services available over wider hours and to many harder to reach people. Two target groups were men who tend to generally be more reluctant to go to GPs until they really have to, and young women needing access to emergency contraception or advice.
Another misconception is that it serves only the leafy suburbs of Norwich. In fact when we set it up, Sainsbury PLC was very helpful in sharing some of their detailed data of likely clients. Without betraying any confidential information I can assure you that its and the WiC’s clients are very widely spread throughout Norfolk, not just Norwich. The most misunderstood part is, of course, that any potential closure is related to the new provision of a Doctor lead service to be located in the centre of Norwich. The new Darzi clinic is not Nurse lead and will provide a different service to that currently provided at the Norwich (Dussindale) WiC. The proposed closure in April next year is related to finance, not need or type of provision.
Another anomaly is that, yet again, GPs are against the Darzi Clinic probably for the same reasons as they were against the WiC when it opened. We need to remember that GP practices are contracted private businesses. One final message to the unelected PCT taking these decisions is have they considered the potential impact on the hospital A&E who would otherwise take a significant proportion of current WiC patients?
Click for Evening News coverage.
If you have any views on these issues and wish to share them please leave a comment below.
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Courtessy of an article by
Lauren Higgs, Children & Young People Now 23 July 2008
Government refuses call to overhaul testing in schools
Ofsted and the government will not consider reform of testing in schools, despite recommendations from a cross-party group of MPs.
In May, a Children, Schools and Families Select Committee report urged the government to scrap so-called “high-stakes” assessment in favour of a less target-driven approach.However, the government and Ofsted’s official response, published yesterday (21 July), does not include the report’s key proposals, said committee chairman and Labour MP Barry Sheerman.
He told CYP Now: “As usual, the government’s immediate response has been rather disappointing. The government still has its head in the sand and has refused to bite on the core bits of our report.” Sheerman said Ofsted has overwhelming evidence that the existing assessment system does encourage teachers to “teach for the test”, which is detrimental to the long-term education of children.
However, the government does not intend to change the fundamentals of the current system.
Follow link for details
www.cypnow.co.uk/doc.
School’s out so tell me what you think about this or any other related testing topic
Did you get your SATs on time?
was it proerly marked?
Do we need SATs?
Norwich Evening News – Schools’ anger at Sats debacle- 18/07/2008
An “appalling” picture emerged yesterday of how deep the Sats testing shambles is affecting Norfolk and Suffolk with more than three-quarters of schools still waiting for correct result
see also BBC commentary
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The final conference for the European e-Voice conference has taken place in Norwich on May 22 and 23 at the Maid’s Head Hotel and the organisers – include Norfolk County Council.
The e-Voice project is a four year EU funded project developing best practice in e-Participation. It has been led from the Netherlands and Norfolk was the UK Partner.
The event was used to launch a promotional video which focused on myself and other councillors at Norfolk County Council called CivicSurf.
It was this project which got me into blogging. The event was well attended and succeeded in enhancing the European bond in e-governance. My summary was that Great Britain is well advanced in technology but low on trust for its elected leaders. We suffer considerable restrictions on our use of ICT as it is funded by the tax payer and currently that means no politics or reference to our blogs from our official bland County Council sites. However, I am grateful to the government who sponsored Norfolk County Council and to the authority in agreeing to participate and support me and colleagues to do so.
Other projects it funded, such as the Young People’s voting campaign and Bus Stop 39, have won national awards. It supported the ParishCouncilnvolve project which has helped more than 50 parish and town councils develop free websites, and the Norfolk Text Pals project recently won a finalists award from the International Centre of Excellence in e-Participation. e-Voice has been equally successful in our partner countries of Belgium, Germany and Sweden as well as Holland.
The emphasis was on how new channels of communication could run alongside and support existing ones to make sure everyone could participate in civic life in the best way for them. This has been particularly effective in engaging young people and e-Voice funded projects are part of the reason Norfolk and South Norfolk gained Beacon Status for this area of work.
The promo film of CivicSurf was produced by Napoleon Creative
You can see their coverage of the event and link to some video interviews by clicking here.
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At last Norfolk County Council’s Children’s Services Review Panel has agreed to look at how we can improve the public image of our youngsters. At the last meeting (March 19) it was agreed to look closely at how Children’s Services can help improve the image of young people by launching a scrutiny exercise to investigate the issues and report back to the Panel. It has taken me a year to persuade fellow councillors to include this item to look at how we support the image of our young people.
We spend an inordinately long time talking about them. Norfolk County Council spends most of its funds (more than £1billion each year) on young people under 18. The largest share is spent in schools who actually only have responsibility for our younger citizens for just over 14% of their lives between the ages of 5 to 16.
I am writing this post to offer you a chance to comment so that I can help represent all of my constituents not just the ones who are allowed to vote. So if you are young, and care about your views being heard, or like me closer to 95 than 15 and still wish to give your opinions, then please use the below questions as a stimulus for comments.
- Young people cannot vote until they are 18 and often don’t after that – should this be changed?
- How often do adults think of talking with the young and not just to them?
- How often do adults listen?
- Do the police and press focus on this very narrow set of its community in a fair-minded way or do they just focus on the negative issues?
- Is there any real opportunity for young people to engage in forming their own destiny?
- Does citizenship in school do it for you? (teachers and other adults are very welcomed to comment too)
- If you had control of the press what would you focus on about young people?
I am hoping to recruit a number of scrutiny “witnesses” for this project from the media and young people. I have already contacted a couple of young people, who I have previously worked with, to form part of the scrutiny group with fellow councillors. (I need not expand on what age group they will be!)
If you have views that you wish to share please leave a comment below.
If you wish to contact me directly. (email)
If you are young and wish to try another way to input to NCC then try norfolkblurb.
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