Protestors get the hump over south Warwickshire rehab beds consultation - ahead of county council meeting today (Wednesday)

Building a hospital without beds was the straw that broke the camel’s back for protesters outside the county council HQ yesterday (Wednesday).

Appropriately enough, residents from the Shipston area – where there is a new hospital building without a ward – and beyond were accompanied by a camel, Baxter, as around 50 of them gathered ahead of a 10am meeting by the Adult Social Care and Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee. Speaking from the scene, Caroline Gunn, co-chair of the trustees of the Friends of the Ellen Badger Hospital, described the mood.

“There are about 50 people in front of me with banners and a very large camel, it’s quite amazing,” she said. “The Ellen Badger has been demolished and we now have a huge empty building with no beds, it’s the last straw.

“The mood is one of annoyance – but respectful,” added Mrs Gunn. “The people here aren’t the sort of people who normally go on demos, but it’s a mark of how determined people are to fight for hospital beds in Shipston.”

Baxter is part of Joseph’s Amazing Camels, run by the Fossett family near Shipston. His appearance at the demo caused passers-by to stop and chat.

“The camel is absolutely incredible; he’s a local resident and has the hump because there are no beds,” explained Mrs Gunn. “A gentleman has just stopped, greeted the camel and offered his support.”

The bed consultation asks the public to decide where in south Warwickshire to put 35 rehabilitation beds – used to discharge patients from acute settings. Option A sees the beds go across three sites at Ellen Badger, Leamington and Stratford. Whereas Option B sees beds just at Stratford and Leamington.

While the council committee prepared to discuss the bed consultation with representatives from the ICB and SWFT at the meeting, Mrs Gunn shared her thoughts.

“I feel that the range of the consultation is very narrow indeed and has deliberately been made so. And also pitting hospitals against each other is counterproductive.

“And we need more than they’re actually going to get.”

Since the 1990s, over £1.4 million has been donated by the Shipston community through the League of Friends to support and improve the facilities at the hospital, and like the Beds for the Badger campaigners, Mrs Gunn is furious that SWFT and the ICB have gone back on plans to rebuild the hospital with beds.

“The last donation was £650,000 to purchase the additional land for the redevelopment of the hospital because we assumed it would have beds,” she said. “It would never have occurred to us it wouldn’t!”

While the consultation looks solely at rehabilitation beds, Mrs Gunn points to the multiple uses of beds that were available at Shipston previously, including when her husband Jim was dying.

“When we moved to Shipston 20 years ago, Jim had terminal cancer. We were told by doctors in north Oxfordshire ‘you don’t have to worry he will be well looked after’.

“It was a centre of integrated primary care. So we had Shipston Home Nursing, the hospital, the district nurses and a brilliant GP.

“His treatment was absolutely incredible as he approached the end of his life. There was a can-do attitude from the staff at the hospital.”

Now Mrs Gunn is fighting to maintain good local care like her husband experienced before his death in 2007.

“We must go forward with the health authority, to support them and get the best service we can,” she added.

Tense meeting rules out consultation rethink

DESPITE residents and some councillors voicing disquiet about the way the bed consultation is being conducted, the Adult Social Care and Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee held yesterday (Wednesday) largely approved the way it is being handled by SWFT and the ICB, who presented its research at the meeting.

The green-light approval was helped along by chair of the committee Cllr Jo Barker (Con, Shipston), who previously sat on SWFT council of governors as a district councillor.

There are just two options available in the consultation about where 35 community rehabilitation beds should be located in south Warwickshire, as described above. The health authorities have emphasised that their preference is for Option B.

At the meeting, Cllr Barker declined to go ahead with a proposal from Cllr Kate Rolfe (Lib Dem, South Stratford) which questioned why only two options were being presented to the public during the consultation.

Cllr Rolfe said: “I think we ought to look and protect the future when we will need more beds. Not everyone can be looked after at home. I am not going to support either of these options as they are playing communities off against each other.

“It’s not about politics here, this is like Monopoly. It’s a numbers game and it’s not people-centred. Why would I choose something to the detriment of Stratford? I represent Stratford.

“Equally, why would I choose something to the detriment of Shipston, which has a huge and growing rural community? As our MP says, this consultation is inadequate.

“The ICB need to listen to our communities and those in Shipston who are so passionate about their local hospital, they even raised £650,000 for its benefit. Please don’t throw that back in their faces, it’s a little bit of an insult.”

Although Cllr Rolfe asked the committee to support a proposal critical of having just two options to choose from – and being seconded by Cllr David Johnston (Lib Dem, Wellesbourne) – the chair questioned the wording, what it was intended to achieve and dropped the discussion.

There were also some tense moments during the meeting when Cllr Barker, who said she had been through hundreds of pages of papers about other options for the beds and wanted to push forward with healthcare plans for Shipston, threatened to have members of the public thrown out for interrupting.

Representatives from the ICB told the meeting the data shows only 35 community rehabilitation beds are needed in south Warwickshire and they would be better utilised at Leamington and Stratford hospitals, where most people who have used the beds live, rather than Shipston where, the ICB claimed, just a few people had used the beds.