Bounty Mutiny campaign: we're off to meet the Minister for Health...

[RowanMumsnet]

Hello

Hopefully most of you will know about Mumsnet's Bounty Mutiny campaign, which asks for commercial sales reps to be kept off hospital maternity wards.

We just wanted to let you know that a meeting has been arranged between Justine and Dr Daniel Poulter, Conservative MP and minister for the relevant part of the Department of Health.

Dr Poulter has expressed concern about this issue in the past, saying in a letter to NHS Trusts,

"I am asking you to review your practices for allowing representatives from private companies on maternity wards to assure yourselves that you are maintaining women’s dignity and respect shortly after the birth of a baby when they can be tired and vulnerable."

So we're looking forward to discussing the campaign with him and seeing what he has to say. We'll update you here to let you know how it went.

[HullBird]

I received my first bounty pack at my booking in appointment a couple of weeks ago. The midwife, said, like it was a big deal, 'here's all your information but you'll need your official due date before you can sign up for the freebies'. I've just gone through all the bumf (it reminds me a lot of a freshers' pack from University) It's all adverts. However the thing I wish to highlight is that the Money Advice Service leaflet says:
Claim Child Benefit
Fill in the form found in your Bounty pack and post...
Forms can also be obtained from the HM Revenue and Customs department.

Why is the first option the Bounty pack? Please can the Money Advice Service also be contacted as part of the campaign?

[Sarahcsalisbury]

Recently has LO and was shocked to hear bounty rep doing rounds less than 12 hours after he was born! Relatively relieved she left us alone easily but felt she particularly prayed on ladies for whom English wasn't their first language. It isn't a time for commercialism and companies need to be slightly more inventive about collecting details - as if there aren't enough cues that a baby has arrived ! It's lazy on the part of the companies at the cost of enjoying those precious hours with your new baby ! The portraits are also laughable - who wants to be captured in hd at that point? Point and click phone technology is more than adequate !

[ThePowerOfNo]

I think this campaign shows a woeful ignorance about what's actuallt happening to the NHS right now: After ds was born his NHs card came through - or should that be his SERCO card?! Fucking depressing seeing that insignia on such a fundamental document.

So yes, get bounty out of maternity wards , but more importantly get ALL greedy, unaccountable 'private' (although happily draining away public money) corporations out of the NHS. Fucking leeches.

[Kudzugirl]

We've just lost the regional ambulance service to private tender where we are.

I do think there are more fundamental issues to campaign about to be honest and agree with Thepowerofno. Yes, Bounty is another manifestation of this but a minor one in the greater scheme of things. There are far more important services that are being tendered out and I pretty much guarantee that Midwifery services will soon be one of them if more people do not wake up.

Why are millions of people not marching on Westminster over this I will never know.

[NotCitrus]

A minor point, but probably relevant to most hospitals - all the Bounty packs occupy storage space, not to mention about 30 seconds of MW time x 4 Bounty packs they are supposed to issue per pregnancy = lots of wasted staff time in total.

In my last pregnancy I wasn't going to take the packs but the MWs begged me to take the "bloody things" as they were in the way. One farcical day they had apparently received 1000 stage 4 packs which were clogging up access to a vital store room, so staff were begging all people in the antenatal waiting area to take some away. And the adjacent blood test waiting area. And pointing out the recycling bins. Hospital hosts about 5000 births a year and is hugely overcrowded and needs all its space.

So I took half a dozen, kept the tea bags which was about all that was useful, and filled a recycling bin.

Hospitals shouldn't have to deal with all that.

[IceBeing]

whhhhoooopp

The hospital I contacted are now trialling an Opt in card, where you fill in the card if you want the rep to come see you.

[CMOTDibbler]

In 2006 when ds was born, he was in SCBU, and I was crying on my bed hand expressing colostrum (rather than cuddling my baby) when a bounty woman flung open the curtains and instead of apologising and going away started going on about where was my baby.
She kept coming back, which was especially bad as I'd lost a lot of blood, but was dragging myself to scbu to be with ds (no chance of a wheelchair round there, any drinks or food while you were there) so was only at my bed to sleep.

I didn't complain, but I had already made a formal complaint about the terrible care I experienced over the course of my miscarriages, and just couldn't cope with making further complaints

[Goldmandra]

The hospital I contacted are now trialling an Opt in card, where you fill in the card if you want the rep to come see you.

Brilliant.

Can you ask them how they propose to monitor its success? It should not be incumbent upon the women whose wishes have been ignored to make complaints if the system is abused which is highly likely from all accounts.

[PigletJohn]

I have a feeling they may not be overwhelmed by opt-in cards.

How about a Mumsnet piss off no thanks card to pin to your curtain or hang on the bed?

[tribpot]

I see a new merchandising opportunity for Mumsnet here, PigletJohn!

And PowerofNo, I completely agree that the commercialisation of the NHS as a whole is extremely worrying; Bounty is an extreme example of what may happen elsewhere. But Mumsnet can't fight the government on the entire issue of how the NHS operates and funds itself. This is a specific issue where it can (hopefully) lobby effectively.

I can't believe the NHS card arrived with a Serco logo on, btw. That is truly shocking. I hope you made a complaint about it to your CCG.

[JugglingFromHereToThere]

Wow (though I shouldn't be so impressed at reasonable behavoiur really!)

a hospital is trialling an Opt-In card, IceBeing

Fantastic, and one of only two reasonable options to me, the other (and obviously somewhat preferable) being just ban from wards/hospitals altogether

[confuddledDOTcom]

What happens when you do opt in though? I hope they don't end up using it as proof they're wanted. It's not about being wanted.

[JugglingFromHereToThere]

Yes, and there's a big difference in opting in purely off your own bat - like going online and finding Mumsnet for yourself - than being asked if you want to join, say by a MW at an antenatal appointment.
If they were to do that I wouldn't consider it a true opt-in service at all.

[ChaffinchOfDoom]

there are many worrying concerns with bounty reps, the more I think about it

1. privacy - they barge in
   
2. they mislead to steal data
   
3. infection control - they are touching everyone/babies throughout the ward, constantly interacting - this is an extra risk to new mothers and babies
   
4. security - are they actually CRB/DBS checked? they are non-medical and dressed misleadingly - plus their total freedom of access
   
5. their using of hospital facilities/resources & getting in the way in area of limited space
   
6. legal issue for the hospital - potentially new mothers can sue the trust for not protecting her and her baby from exploitation
   
   I have a section planned in for next week, will be interested to see what happens in this hospital - a diff one to where I had my other 2 dc
   number 3) worries me most, actually, my dsis is a nurse and has done a specialisation on infection control - tiny things seemingly insignificant such as pens being chewed and passed around can have massive implications

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

Bravo MNHQ! :)

As I'm sure you are aware NHS Scotland is completely separate, and run solely by the Scottish Government. Are you also trying to set up a meeting with the Scottish Government re Bounty in Scottish hospitals?

[ChaffinchOfDoom]

my nhs friends do efficiency studies - surely the reps adversely affect the efficiency on the ward - as upthread poster explains on the room taken up, the chatting to other workers, distracting MW,

[PigletJohn]

who can make a better one? It needs bigger type

[PigletJohn]

I especially like that one

///uploads/talk/201403/medium-9408-bounty.jpg

Who's got a colour printer?

[isisisis]

Brilliant suffolknwhat Im imagining a new mumsnet scarf with that logo as the print.

[BoffinMum]

PowerofNo, my mum had a swastika on her birth certificate until the law changed and you were allowed to swap them for plain ones much later.

Incidentally Serco wrote to me telling me to go for a smear test last year. I complained to the DoH in the grounds that I hadn't consented for my information to be given to a third party. I then got a plain letter from my GP inviting me. Success.

[confuddledDOTcom]

I feel a bit thick here, who are Serco?

[tribpot]

Serco