Friday, 20 October 2017

Brexit: and not knowing how it's effecting Devon NHS

There are concerns that Brexit will have an effect on how the NHS works:
Futures Forum: Brexit: and catering, construction and care sectors getting ready

As reported in the BBC: 

Share of European Union staff leaving NHS rises following Brexit


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A group of four young trainee nurses including male and female nurses, walk away from camera down a hospital corridor. They are wearing UK nurse uniforms of trousers and tunics.Image copyrightSTURTI
Image captionExperts say England does not yet produce enough home-grown staff for the NHS to meet requirements without workers from abroad
The proportion of EU nationals leaving jobs in the NHS is rising, while the share of those joining is shrinking.
The BBC analysed NHS Digital figures, which showed the trend in England over the past two-and-a-half years. Health experts say the UK's decision to leave the European Union in June 2016 was behind the trend. The Department of Health says new language requirements for EU nurses may have played a part.
The analysis comes days after the Care Quality Commission (CQC) said the health system was "straining at the seams" and faced a "precarious" future, highlighting staff shortages and rising vacancy rates.

Share of European Union staff leaving NHS rises following Brexit - BBC News

This has been taken up by a County Councillor:


New evidence that Brexit is harming NHS staffing – but Devon County Council has no figures for the local situation


POSTED ON  UPDATED ON 
There is new evidence that Brexit is adding to the NHS’s chronic staff shortage. Far fewer nurses and doctors from other EU countries are coming for jobs in the UK, while many of those already here are leaving – or plan to leave.
Locally, the RD&E is struggling to recruit care workers for the ‘new model of care’ to replace community beds. Council officers freely admit that Brexit is making Devon’s social care recruitment crisis worse, and at the County Council meeting on 5th October I asked for figures on the number of people from other EU countries in health, social care and education in the county. The answer was that the Council can’t produce them – in a follow-up question I asked the Cabinet to remedy that, and also to reassure EU citizens that they are valued here.
Many people voted for Brexit partly to help the NHS – but are now realising that it is doing the opposite. Of course the Leave campaign said that it wanted to allow professionals like nurses and doctors still to come to Britain – it was more the unskilled workers it wanted to stop (although where that would leave our farming and tourism industries is another problem). What this argument overlooked is that doctors and nurses who move here are not just making a decision about a job – they are looking at whether the country is open and welcoming. The message that Britain didn’t want foreigners went out loud and clear to the people we need to keep our NHS going, as well as everyone else.
Leave voters rightly hoped to see more money go to our underfunded NHS. However it is now universally recognised that the Leave campaign’s idea of saving ‘£350 million a week’ was utterly misleading. Much of the money never goes to the EU (because of the rebate negotiated by Margaret Thatcher) and most of the rest comes back to support things like agriculture, scientific research and regional development in places like the South West – expenditure that the British government will need to replace. Recently it has become clear that the economy has fallen back since the referendum to the extent that the Government is already losing much more in tax revenues than it will eventually save by leaving the EU. So the NHS has no hope of gaining money from Brexit, and is hit on the staffing side too.

New evidence that Brexit is harming NHS staffing – but Devon County Council has no figures for the local situation « SEATON & COLYTON matters

See also:
DCC has no evidence that new way of working – is working! | East Devon Watch
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