What did Cllr Ian Lewis ask about a new maternity service in Seacombe due to start on the 20th March 2018 and why wasn’t the councillor for Seacombe present to hear it?
Wednesday afternoon’s public meeting of Wirral Council’s Health and Wellbeing Board started without its Chair Cllr Phil Davies. Usually if he can’t make it, one of the other two Labour Cabinet Members on the Board (Cllr Bernie Mooney and Cllr Chris Jones) chair the meeting instead.
However they weren’t there either.
Last year, Labour made it clear they wanted Labour councillors to chair all committees, so in the absence of the three Labour councillors, a Wirral Council employee Fiona Johnstone (Acting Director for Strategy and Partnerships) chaired the meeting instead.
Before the meeting started, private discussions over who present would chair the meeting and the lack of any Wirral Council solicitor present to advise on procedure meant the start was delayed by thirteen minutes.
Cllr Chris Jones (Labour Cabinet Member for Social Care and Health) did arrive 26 minutes after the public meeting had been scheduled to start and took over the chairing of the meeting at this point. She did apologise during the meeting for her lateness explaining that she had had urgent other matters to attend to.
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Cllr Chris Jones (councillor for Seacombe) would’ve missed the maternity update on a new service for pregnant women in Seacombe due to start on the 20th March 2018.
You can watch what was said about maternity and the questions that were asked in the video above.
A local #DefendOurNHS campaign group will be having a public meeting on Wednesday 28th March at 7.00 pm at St Paul’s Church Hall, Church Road, Seacombe, CH44 7BA. The topic of the meeting will be the new Seacombe ‘pop up’ birthing centre. According to a leaflet about it speakers at the meeting will be Felicity Dowling and Stephanie Miller.
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The new Seacombe “Pop up” birthing centre, shouldn’t that be “Pop out”
Can’t help but wonder is someone getting paid to sit in an office, coming up with all these stupid names the Council uses for committee’s and the like!
Sadly, Wirral Council doesn’t have much of a choice over the name of the Health and the Wellbeing Board as it’s been a legal requirement since 2013 for Wirral Council to have one .
As to the description of the Seacombe birthing centre, I would guess it probably stems from how is was described in a press release written by somebody who didn’t think it through!
The plan is for the pregnant women of Seacombe to be used as guinea pigs. God help the mother and baby if expert help is needed in a dire emergency. At the birth of my first daughter in APH, a team of 15 multi-skilled, highly-qualified gynae staff arrived in an instant when there were complications. But that cannot happen at a moment’s notice in this cheaper, more economical “pop-up” setting. Also… the people of Seacombe were never consulted…. which would NOT have happened if the council leader’s home of West Kirby had been chosen to locate it. Which it wasn’t because wealthier people tend to have the means to access lawyers and sue the arse off the council if a mother or baby die or suffer life-altering injuries. Also, the poor people of Seacombe cannot access legal aid, so won’t only potentially lose their loved ones, they will have little to no chance of any redress. Labour Councillor Bernie Mooney and her hard right colleagues are cruel, negligent and deeply uncaring individuals and need separating from the power they are free to abuse before somebody foreseeably and avoidably dies.
I also KNOW that Mooney walked out of a recent Labour Party meeting when this issue came up, showing us all the true depth of her commitment to the safety of Seacombe’s pregnant women and their unborn babies.
My wife went from low risk to high risk in a matter of seconds. This is a potentially killing brand of cynicism. Imagine dying aged 10 seconds all because Bernie Mooney couldn’t be arsed listening to a local surgeon with 40 years’ experience who came to advise her that this is FKN deeply reckless and highly dangerous to life and limb.
Also, we all KNOW that if there is a foreseeable and avoidable death or serious incident, the senior officer bullies will come out in force, flex their muscles and it will be covered up to preserve the bloodstained careers of callous politicians.
AND… the timing of this looming threat to life expectancy in one of the poorest parts of Wirral could not have been worse.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/mar/15/concern-at-rising-infant-mortality-rate-in-england-and-wales
“Concern At Rising Infant Mortality Rate In England And Wales”
John, did you delete my last post with the link to the Guardian story re: the plunging survival rate of babies born in England and Wales dated yesterday? It was highly relevant to this subject.
Thanks.
No, it had a link in it. As the vast majority of comments with links in are off topic spam, such comments have to be moderated and approved by myself before publication.
You happened to leave it at 10.10 pm, so moderation was done this morning. So I got the email about it and your later comment and approved it.