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 | You and Yours - Transcript ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4 |
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| TX: 24.10.03 – LONG TERM CONDITIONS - UPDATE |
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| PRESENTER: LIZ BARCLAY BARCLAY There are around eight million people in this country who have long term and medical conditions such as spinal or brain injury. You may remember two weeks ago we reported that next year the government is due to publish new national guidelines for improving the health and social care of those affected. And we explained how you could take part in the consultation on what those guidelines should say. Well since that programme the Long Term Medical Conditions Alliance, which is running the consultation, has been inundated with your responses and David Pink is the Alliance's chief executive, he joins us now. David you must be very pleased with the response? PINK We are we're very pleased, both with the number of responses and with the fact that we're getting responses in from ordinary people with long term conditions. And often they have a quite different perspective on what's needed from the NHS and from social care. I mean often it's not necessarily rocket science or great problems that would involve huge spending of resources, often it's about basic access to services and respect for people. BARCLAY So give us some examples of what they're saying. PINK Well a couple of examples, we've had people who are in residential care talking about issues that are just basic respect issues, such as people being able to decide what time they get up in the morning. I mean this might not seem a major issue but people living in care settings often have their whole life regimented by the care home. Or we've had an example of someone in residential care being told that their newly appointed care worker told them that they thought that the idea of disabled people having sex was disgusting and that it shouldn't be allowed. But these are basic parts of life for the rest of us and we're hoping that the new guidelines will extend a basic right to a normal life to more people with long term conditions. BARCLAY And there's still time to respond to that consultation document? PINK There is. I mean technically the deadline expired at the end of last month but we haven't yet completed writing up all the contributions, so any contributions we get between now and the end of next week we shall still be able to include. BARCLAY Okay and if you'd like to respond to that consultation document give us a call and we'll give you the details as to how to go about it. David, thank you for joining us. Back to the You and Yours homepage The ´óÏó´«Ã½ is not responsible for external websites |
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