SUPPORT Stafford Hospital campaigners fighting the closure of the West Midlands hospital’s A&E, maternity, and paediatrics departments have set up camp in the hospital grounds.
This comes after two legal bids to stop a planned ‘downgrade’ failed.
More than 50 people are currently camping at the site and hospital workers, patients and local residents as well as other hospital campaigners have visited the site to show their support, including many who have brought donations of food and camping equipment.
It comes as 60 beds are being axed due to allegedly low staffing levels. Trust bosses at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire and the Royal Wolverhampton Trust are set to take control of Stafford and Cannock Hospitals later this year.
There are also plans to contract out Staffordshire cancer and end-of-life services at a cost of £1bn.
News Line visited the site on Tuesday and spoke to some of the ‘campers’.
Lesley Harrison from Cannock said: ‘We’re facing an aggressive takeover at Stafford. The management at University Hospital of North Staffordshire (UHNS) are not talking to the people who work here. They are not coming to share good practice.
‘Stafford Hospital staff are being treated like second-class citizens. They were told it was going to be sharing good practice. Since the Mid Staffs problems, this hospital has had more inspections by the CQC (Care Quality Commission) than any other hospital in the country.
‘Stafford is now rated one of the best hospitals in the country. Instead of taking good practice from here to improve their systems at UHNS, they are downgrading Stafford Hospital. Our maternity and paediatrics departments are some of the best in the country.
‘We think outcomes are better for mothers to have their babies locally and in smaller units where they are treated as a whole person. Families with small children don’t want to go a distance for treatment.
‘We set up this camp when the Judicial Review was turned down for a second time. We’ve put in an appeal but I don’t have much faith in the system. I fear if we don’t stand up and be counted our services will be taken away.
‘If the group felt it was the only way to save our services, I’d support an occupation. The unions should be doing everything they can to protect the staff from pay cuts and redundancies.’
Barry Davies, an ex-nurse who trained at Stafford, told News Line: ‘The Trust Special Administrator said Stafford can’t recruit staff. They say this is because the trust has a reputation and nobody wants to work here.
‘The truth is they did not want to recruit, but eventually they had to and there are three people applying for every job offered.
‘These are experienced staff that want to come and work here. We know that the move to downgrade Stafford is to fund the huge PFI overspend at UHNS.
‘They spent £200m on the Trust Special Administration process here for an £8m overspend at Stafford, which in this day and age is not a lot of money. What makes me angry is I had two children and two grandchildren born in this hospital.
‘If they had had to go to UHNS at Stoke (-on-Trent), their place of birth would have been a hard shoulder on the M6 and I’d have been midwife!
‘We’ve had marches and we’ve got the camp now. It will be two weeks on Friday. It was a spontaneous thing. People are fed up with not being listened to. The government seems hell-bent on closing our hospital to the extent that David Cameron repeated allegations at the last Tory conference that people were drinking out of flower vases, which has been disproved.
‘I’d like to see the unions doing something and politicians to start listening to the electorate as they are supposed to be our representatives. We’re here for the long haul.’
Cheryl Porter a founder member of Support Stafford Hospital, along with her husband Julian, said: ‘I’m just another mum with children and a husband, a grandfather and myself who have all used this hospital over the last 17 years.
‘All of us have received exemplary care. That’s why I started fighting for this hospital when they told us three years ago that we were going to lose our A&E overnight. (The A&E is currently open from 8am to 10pm – News Line)
‘I knew that was wrong because when you close an A&E you can lose all your services behind it, which is what is happening now.
‘It’s diabolical that the government is allowing this to happen at Stafford. After all that happened at Mid Staffs, is this how they say sorry to the town and its people! We’re all angry and we want the wrong that is happening to be put right.
‘We want the people who have made the decisions to be big enough to stand up and put things right.
‘The main person who could do this is our prime minister David Cameron. The trade unions should take action. Our NHS is not about politics, it’s about people, our health and well being.
‘This affects everybody in the country, whatever political persuasion they are. Everyone should stand up and start shouting very loudly that our NHS is the best thing that”s ever happened to this country.
‘And everybody should be fighting for it.
‘If the NHS is gone, there won’t be any A&Es or critical care because the private sector does not see it as a money-making venture.’
Julian Porter told News Line: ‘We decided to set up the camp because we’d had enough. Two wards were closed down and we weren’t being listened to. I put on our facebook page that I was camping at the hospital and four people turned up.
‘Since then it has mushroomed, we’ve got forty-plus tents now, massive supplies from the community and staff coming down to support us.
‘We’ve had Lewisham Hospital campaigners here and we’ve got Save the Alex in Birmingham coming soon. We’ve had messages of support from Manchester, Bolton, Charing Cross – from all over.
‘Other people who are fighting for their hospitals have given us massive respect. We had 50,000 march in Stafford and it was never mentioned on the national news – they are still not listening to us.
‘There’s a media propaganda campaign against the NHS – why would you denigrate nurses? Obviously there’s an agenda. We will carry on this protest. There’s a judicial review appeal on Wednesday.
‘If it fails we’ve got grounds for a different judicial review ad we’ll be back in the courts again.’
The camp was visited by Trust Special Administrator representative Hugo Mascie-Taylor, whom protesters said has just got another job working for regulator Monitor, and Stafford Hospital chief executive Maggie Oldham to inform that the ‘transition’ has been brought forward.
Rachel Dale and her daughter and 20 other campaigners were sitting in a gazebo on the field of Stafford hospital, on Day 12 of the Support Stafford Hospital camp. There was a full buffet of drinks and cakes and children were playing nearby.
She said it started with one gazebo, with thunder and lightning. ‘We had 10 tents and its just grown to 30 or so. People go to work and sleep here.
‘People realised we are here and supplies started coming in. It is unbelievable what people brought in – ice packs, paddling pool for the kids, offers to do washing. We’ve had tweets from Guatemala and Spain.
‘We’ve got to battle this as one, now. The Alex (people from Queen Alexandra Hospital, Redditch) are coming down at the weekend.
‘I got involved when my Dad took ill, and Stafford saved him. He would not have made it to Stoke.
‘There was an incident where the M6 motorway was jammed up and the ambulance had to go to Stoke on the hard shoulder. There was a birth on the M6 recently.
‘For around three years the A&E stops at 10pm. Patients are redirected, but to where? It’s now a post code lottery where you go. UHNS (University Hospital of North Staffordshire in Stoke) may not have the capacity, so patients get redirected to where?
‘They want to take our in- patient paediatrics by January. Likewise with maternity. They have started stripping services. They tried to move neurology. Radiology is still here. We have still got anaesthetics and still got the intensive care unit (CCU)at the moment.
‘Stafford is brilliant and we need it. There are not enough ambulances. There was a case where a baby of three months had breathing difficulties. A ‘first responder’ came but had no ambulance for transport. So the mother had to call her parents to bring their car and put the baby and the first responder in their car, and bring the baby to Stafford.
‘We cannot stop campaigning because lives are at risk. After 10pm the A&E is closed. The Out of Hours GP service used to be next door but this has also closed. So if you ring after 10pm, either they send someone from Cannock, Wolverhampton, Walsall or Stoke, or you have to take the patient there.
‘I got fed up with the hospital staff being slated. We do have an excellent service and we have to fight for it. This was brought to light with my Dad. My friend had excellent care in the ICU with a pulmonary embolism.
‘Parents in Stafford are petrified if they take away the children’s ward. At the moment they can get immediate access for a sick child who is known to the ward, for example if the child has epileptic fits.
‘The CCGs (Clinical Commissioning Groups) are supposed to consult. They do deals behind closed doors. Stafford and Surround CCG and Cannock and District CCG had these plans all along for a midwife led unit, no acute paediatrics, no A&E and no level 3 CCU.
‘We’re angry about the consultation. Their idea is to tell you what they’re going to do. The plan was pre-ordained. The consultation was a sham. The TSA (Trust Special Administrator) and Monitor are not accountable. These accountancy firms have a murky past.
‘As we went into administration, they brought in the TSAs who set up a Contingency Planning Team (CPT). They told us the TSA was an “independent body” and that the CPT would do its own “independent study,” by Ernst and Young.
The courts have turned down two requests for Judicial Review (JR), one brought by a Labour MP and one by one of our community. Tomorrow, we are appealing against the decision to refuse the JR, as much of the information that was given was not accurate.
‘The TSA and UHNS are running the hospital and the staff down. UHNS want to downgrade us as quickly as possible. We’re occupying hospital land. We are not going to remove ourselves until we get listened to and definitely for the Summer holidays.
‘The hashtag for the camp is occupy Support Stafford Hospital. It’s a community campaign.’
