The state of Reading's health and wellbeing will be presented by Kim Wilkins of Reading Borough Council's Public Health team along with a look at how the state of our health is assessed and how it is used by our CCG in planning developments in health care. Click here to get started with JSNA = Joint Strategic Needs Assessment for Reading. We will also be receiving news from Patient Participation Groups, from Healthwatch and from our CCG as well as national NHS news of interest to us. CCG area.

Stewart Rowbotham, Director of Wellbeing for Wokingham will be talking about "Redesigning Care for the Frail Elderly" at our meeting at 6pm on Wednesday, 24th February 2016, at 94 London Street, RG1 4SJ. Other matters discussed will be news from the CCG and from Patient Participation Groups at GP practices in the South Reading CCG area.

Social Prescribing will be our main topic when Sarah Morland, of Reading Voluntary Action, tells us about this new development which is being piloted at several South Reading CCG area GP practices. The meeting will start at 6pm on 27th January 2016 at 94, London Street, RG1 4SJ. In addition to the talk on Social Prescribing we will be discussing news from Patient Participation Groups, from our CCG and from Reading Healthwatch. South Reading Patient Voice is open to anyone using a GP practice belonging to South Reading CCG while others my attend as guests by arrangement.

The GP chair of South Reading CCG, Dr Ishak Nadeem, will be our speaker at the next South Reading Patient Voice meeting at 6pm on Wednesday, 25th November at 94, London Street, Reading RG1 4SJ. Please prepare and send in your questions about health and healthcare in South Reading. We will also be hearing your news from local Patient Participation Groups and GP practices and hope to hear more about planned changes in local healthcare. There will also be elections for Chair, Vice-chair and Information Officer - our 3 offices - and a chance to give views on how our group is doing.

Under NHS England's new five-year plan our sustainability and transformation programme is to be organised by COBWeB (Commissioning for Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Western Berkshire). This organisation will be headed by David Smith, continuing and current chief executive of Oxfordshire CCG. What level of public and patient participation, local authority engagement and collaboration there will be over this unwieldy and unnatural area remains to be seen. There is a long history of mismanagement of Reading's facilities by county-level authorities, and Oxford-based management of the AAA screening programme in Reading has been far from inspiring. Let us hope that David Smith will show that this is not inevitable.

The CQC has given a "good" rating to Berkshire Healthcare Foundation Trust the provider of mental health services, community nursing services, out of hours GP services and of some primary care GP services across Berkshire. The trust received individual "good" ratings or all of its service groups except for "wards for people with learning difficulties or autism" which received the rating "requires improvement". The individual GP services provided had been rated separately earlier - Circuit Lane surgery received "required improvement", Priory Avenue surgery received "good". Click here for detailed reports on aspects of the Trust's service.

End of Life care is improving but there is still room for improvement. That's the message from an audit of end of life care in hospitals funded by the Marie Curie Foundation and NHS England. This is the first audit since the withdrawal of the "Liverpool Care Pathway" in 2014 which, it had been found, was not been appropriately and compassionately applied in some cases, Marie Curie Foundation comments: "Overall, the results show that there have been documented improvements in: 

1. Recognition that patients are dying and that they have received holistic assessments of their care
2. The amount and quality of communication with patients who are able to communicate, and with those identified as important to them
3. Symptom control for the dying person
4. Commitment to education, training, reporting and continuous improvement in caring for dying people

However, there is room for improvement, particularly in the provision of palliative care services 24-7; the audit also shows how some hospitals did well in many areas but not in others. " You can also read comments from the Royal College of Physicians. The full report is attached.

South Reading CCG have appointed Wendy Bower as Lay Member of the Governing Body with responsibility for Patient Engagement. Wendy fulfills the same role for the North and West Reading CCG and has a background in nursing and nurse education. She lives locally in Wokingham.

Eye specialists say hundreds of patients suffer irreversible sight loss every year in England because services are overstretched and under-resourced. The president of The Royal College of Ophthalmologists, Prof Carrie MacEwen, writing for the BBC's Scrubbing Up, warns the NHS is struggling to keep up because of a "perfect storm" of increased demand, caused by more eye disease in an ageing population which requires requiring long term care. She says the current treatment targets fail to reflect the critical importance of follow-up appointments, which may be delayed for months or even years. "Many eye diseases which can cause sight loss are more common in older people and our aging population means the demand on ophthalmology, like all areas of healthcare, is increasing like never before."

Reading Borough Council is responsible along with the local NHS for arranging support services for carers. After a re-tendering exercise jointly with West Berks Council the contract is to be given to Carers Trust East Midlands who are based in Nottingham. Support will shift from Berkshire Carers to Carers Trust East Midlands at the end of March 2016. Anyone who wants their newsletters or other communication to be continued by the new provider after March 2016 should contact Berkshire Carers with details of their name, address, phone number and email address asking that these details be passed to the new provider. This could be by email to helpline@berkshirecarers.org or by phone to 0800 988 5462. This needs to be done before 31st March. The new provider can be contacted on their helpline 0118 324 7333.