Reading is creating a recovery college for those recovering from or living with mental illness. You can find out about the recovery college at an event organised by Reading Voluntary Action on Monday, 24th October.

We understand that Tilehurst Medical Centre, a branch of the practice provided by Dr Kumar and partners with main surgery at Milman Road, is to close in the near future. Patients have been notified by letter.

"Integrating Health and Social Care in Reading" will be the topic when Kevin Johnson, Reading's Integration Manager for Care Services, addresses South Reading Patient Voice on Wednesday, 26th October at 6pm at 94, London Street, Reading RG1 4SJ. The group will also hear news from Patient Participation Groups, the CCG, Healthwatch and discuss local NHS services.

Simon Warren, Interim Managing Director of Reading Borough Council, speaking at the Audit and Governance Committee meeting on 29th September, declared that the Council was on the cusp of going to law with the NHS CCGs over the costs of continuing care for Reading residents. Councillor Eileen McElligot noted that the Council and the CCGs had been in dispute for years about these costs. The relevant discussion can be seen at the archived webcast ot the audit and governance committee meeting on 29th September 2016 at about 43 mnutes and 50 seconds into the webcast. A council report from February 2016 gives the background showing that the funding for Continuing Health Care in South Reading is entirely out of line with that to comparable areas.

The BMA's Junior Doctors' Committee has called off strike action in its continuing opposition to the NHS Employers' new contract. We don't yet know what they will propose as actions against the NHS Providers' new contract.

Reading's Health and Wellbeing Board meets in public in the Council Chamber in the Civic Offices on Bridge Street at 2pm on 7th October. The agenda and papers will be found 5 days before the meeting on the meeting web site .

The information that patients need to understand how well their GP surgery is performing is the subject of the talk and discussion led by Francis Brown of the Priory Avenue PPG on 28th September at 6pm to 7.45pm at Reading Community Learning Centre, 94, London Street, RG1 4SJ. We will also hear news from the CCG and patient participation groups, Healthwatch and discuss our future activities. The meeting is open to everyone registered with a GP practice in the South Reading CCG clinical area.

Mr Luke March has been appointed as chair of the Western Berkshire Accountable Care System - a collaboration of the principal NHS organisations in Western Berkshire. We are facing a period of several years in which NHS funding growth will be around 1% per year on average - hardly enough to keep up with population growth, let alone the ageing of the population, increasing living standards or advances in medicine. In Western Berkshire the strategy for the NHS five-year forward view has been to bring together the principal parts of the NHS in the area into a place-based collaboration known as an Accountable Care System (ACS) which will seek ways of working together by agreement to improve health care and health system efficiency. The initial ACS will be formed by agreement between the Royal Berkshire Hospital Foundation Trust, the Berkshire Healthcare Foundation Trust and the four CCGs of Western Berkshire. The collaboration will be able to change pathways for patient treatment, change payment procedures and incentives between the partners, move activity from one site to another, perhaps from hospital to community but only by agreement, however hardly reached, between the partners. Mr March has been a non-executive director in the NHS since 1998. He was Chair of Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust from 2005 to 2013 and of the Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases NHS Foundation Trust from 2013 to 2015. In addition he has also chaired the Audit Committee of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme and worked as Group Company Secretary and Compliance Director of the TSB Group, Corporate Governance Director of the BT Group, Chief Executive of the mortgage industry regulator and most recently Group Compliance Director of the Royal Mail Group. He is also currently Chairman of the National Churches Trust and the Building Societies Trust and serves as Lay Canon on the Chapter of Salisbury Cathedral. Price Waterhouse Cooper consultants have been tasked with creating the new system of payments by the members of the ACS. It is hoped that the three local authorities of Western Berkshire will be able to join the ACS eventually as may the South Central Ambulance Foundation Trust.

The British Medical Association (BMA), the doctors' trade union, has announced that doctors in training ("junior doctors" - who can be any grade below consultant and may be in their mid-thirties) will hold 5-day all-out strikes in October, November and December but the strike announced for December has been called off. The strike threats come after the BMA junior doctor membership rejected the official BMA recommendation to accept the proposed new contract as the best available in a ballot and the Health Secretary stated the intention of the NHS employers (he has no power to do this) to impose the proposed contract. It can be expected that consultants will step in to maintain services but this will mean their abandoning their normal clinics and procedures so that many operations and appointments will be cancelled. The BMA has issued a statement on the proposed strike in which they describe the main issues as the effects of the proposed new contract on part-time doctors and the effect of the new contract on those junior doctors working the most weekends. Junior doctors already work shifts and on-call sessions at night and at weekends, but the Health Secretary claims that the new contract, which reduces extra payment for working out of normal hours, is necessary to provide the 7-day NHS which was one of the Government's election promises. The cancellation will undoubtedly be upsetting and possibly damaging for some patients. But another danger is that the demoralisation of the junior doctors will result in more junior doctors either leaving the profession altogether or emigrating to a country where conditions are more attractive. As we already have a big shortfall in doctors, with specialisms such as Emergency Medicine, General Practice and Anaesthetics very short of trainees, this is a serious problem which the Government and NHS employers must try to avoid. One of the aggravating factors in the discussion has been the Health Secretary's manipulative approach to the question of whether people who fall ill at the weekend are at greater risk than those fall ill in the week. His approach has been strongly criticised by several doctor MPs in various parties, including his own. This has contributed to demoralisation of the junior doctors whose training is strongly oriented to evidence-based medicine. The Health Secretary has proposed a helpful review of issues outside the contract that affect junior doctors training and that could be changed to improve their working lives, but it has not yet come to any conclusion and indeed may not yet have started.

The Government's plan for reducing childhood obesity was published on 18th August 2016 (see attached file). Most reviews were unfavourable. The King's Fund has published an analysis and a comparison of the plan with the recommendations of the Health Select Committee of the House of Commons . The Government's plan has no definite objective but expects to significantly reduce England's rate of childhood obesity within the next ten years. It includes the promised tax on sugary drinks and measures to reduce childrens' sugar intake and increase activity and sport in primary schools, but avoids consideration of advertising or promotions. This report can be set in the wider context of the Government's reluctance to act on public health. Simon Steven's five-year forward view was predicated on progress in public health, but with no action on a minimum price for alcohol, cuts to public health funding, little action on air pollution and this disappointing childhood obesity plan, the Government can be judged not to have played its part.