Bedford Hospital - A Fight on Our Hands to get Essential Children's Hospital Services Back to Bedford

"Families across Bedford Borough are in shock after the announcement from Bedford Hospital of the removal of A&E for children for all but minor injuries and of children's overnight care. This follows the withdrawal of junior doctors from the paediatrics department due to concerns over their supervision by senior consultants. It is shameful that this has been allowed to happen, and those responsible must be held to account.

The loss of essential local hospital services for children is deeply distressing for all local families and for our entire community. The removal of overnight care will cause tremendous disruption for families experiencing the very highest levels of anxiety. Families with children with high medical needs are inevitably going to be extremely concerned about what the reduced services mean for them, and I was appalled to learn that as of last Thursday these 290 families were still to be contacted to explain the implications for their child's care. I insisted that this must happen immediately as a matter of absolute priority.

At the urgent meeting of the Health and Wellbeing Board which I chaired last week, I confronted the hospital about the desperate lack of communication with local families about the imminent loss of key children's services. They have acted on this since the meeting, but it is awful that it needed them to be publicly embarrassed into improving their communication with local people at this time.

I also called on NHS figures at the meeting to commit to bringing the services we are about to lose back to Bedford as soon as possible. The Hospital representatives made clear that this 'decision' lies with the local NHS Commissioning Group. Rather than committing to bringing services back, the Commissioners instead announced a consultation on permanent changes to paediatric services.

This is nothing other than an attempt to exploit this deeply distressing crisis for local families to force through an agenda of cutting acute services such as paediatrics in smaller hospitals in our area, which has placed Bedford Hospital very firmly under threat. I launched a campaign against this agenda last autumn as the plans emerged, and you can read what I wrote about this at the time here: www.mayordave.org.uk/Bedford-Hospital-Campaign

The local NHS commissioning group took on the job of pursuing this programme earlier this year. I am shocked, however, that rather than working to rectify the dreadful current situation for local families, it is instead using it to try to force through a damaging, permanent downgrading of our hospital's services for children.

All local NHS efforts should be on fixing the particular problem of supervision of junior doctors and ensuring vital children's services are restored as soon as possible. Nothing else will be acceptable to local families, who will be appalled that NHS decision makers' response to this severe crisis is to try to impose permanent cuts. I will do everything in my power to block this renewed attempt to downgrade our hospital, and will work alongside everyone who is committed to seeing the full range of children's services reinstated in Bedford .

Best wishes

Mayor Dave Hodgson

P.S. If you are on facebook, you can join nearly 6,000 others in the 'Save Our Riverbank Ward' group here: www.facebook.com/SaveOurRiverbankWard . The group was created by a local father of a child with a rare medical condition."