Today I attended a local CCG public meeting in Bromsgrove. The CCG are the people responsible for our health and wellbeing; they make the decisions on spending money and our healthcare. Once again it was not what I expected, set in the council chamber which is like a mini UN room using individual microphones sat around a huge group of tables with around 10 people from the general public on the sidelines.
A very formal meeting with a rigid agenda and allocated times for questions from the general public, there was a lot of self praise for how well they are doing and how the budget had been managed. Mental health came up as a “key area of focus” with a commitment to redesign primary care mental health services and “increasing focus and investment in mental health and well being services”.
We will see, I heard a lot of promise and commitment I am just keen to see the action (at the moment there doesn’t seem to be any!). Later I will be going to the Redditch Mental Health Action Group (Redditch MHAG) so hopefully there will be some action. There was an interesting presentation on public health in the local area by Liz Altay highlighting some pretty shocking health statistics relating to specific areas in Bromsgrove and Redditch.
I grabbed the opportunity to speak with her afterwards discussing all things “mental health”. Liz was aware of HeadGym and Redditch MHAG and helped us out when we started, it’s good to see that people like Liz support our cause.
Neil