End of the road for hospital inspection body

“The Staffordshire LINKs has not been successful so I thought it best to wind it up and start again”

Just one more thing I inherited which wasn’t doing what it was meant to be. That’s happened a lot since winning control of Staffordshire in June.

And the purpose of LINKs (Public Involvment Network) as an independent body of volunteers who monitor and shape health and social care in the county is really important, particularly set against the background of Stafford Hospital.

Set up 15 months ago, it costs around £300k a year to run with work coordinated on a daily basis by a local university under contract from the County. But sadly, over that time it has been beset by controversy, overcome with problems and the general consensus is that it achieved few of the outcomes around improving care it should have.

I first looked at the Staffordshire LINK a couple of months ago after concerns were raised by the County’s Health Scrutiny Committee. At that time it was clear there were difficulties but I was persuaded to allow a report by the Department of Health to be completed before making a decision.

That report landed on my desk a few days ago and despite being detailed and lengthy, including recommendations on improvements, it really didn’t offer much hope as far as I’m concerned.

And with public confidence in Staffordshire LINK almost non existent I’ve decided to pull the plug on the current arrangements, scrap LINK in its current form and have a team from the County come up with options on a new format.

The essence of LINK is independence so it’s important we establish the best way forward as quickly as possible and then contract it back out to run on a daily basis externally to the County. We’ll start to work out what it will look like at a meeting of the previous LINK volunteers next week.

The key thing for me is to make sure we leave the previous problems, individual and general, behind and get a new body set up to ask fair but tough questions of health and social care providers and commissioners… including my Department.

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