Got a question for Wes Streeting, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care?

[JustineMumsnet]

Hi all,

Next week we’ll be back in Westminster to put your questions to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Wes Streeting MP.

His brief covers some big areas that we know are really important to Mumsnetters - including maternity care, access to GPs and dentists, mental health services, social care, public health, and how we keep the NHS sustainable in the long term. If you’ve got a question you’d like me to ask, please post it below.

As ever, one question per user please and keep it civil. We’ll be tight on time, so please keep questions short and sharp, so I can get through as many as possible.

We’ll close the thread on Wednesday pm - so do get your questions in before then.

Thanks,
Justine

Hospital admissions for Covid have hit a 10-month high - so what is the government doing to PREVENT infections?

We have severely restricted vaccines, no antivirals, no isolation rules and no clean air protections…

Why don’t we have enough training places for doctors when they finish their F2? Do you want them all to go to Australia? These are people with around £100k in student debt if they’ve done it as a graduate.

No wonder the NHS is on its knees

Why can’t we have Novavax?

Germany, Italy, Poland, Sweden, Singapore and Japan all have Novavax. Even America has Novavax!

Why not this country?

Why is this government actively blocking access to a safe and effective non MRNA Covid vaccine?

Give us the CHOICE to protect ourselves, even if we have to pay.

This.

Add fibromyalgia, endometriosis and PCOS
to the list. And actually menopause too.

None of this is well understood, nor are any of these things particularly rare:

Where are the treatments for long Covid?

It’s not mysterious or rare. Over 400,000 research papers prove that long Covid is mainly a combination of one or all of the following: viral persistence, organ damage (including brain damage) and immune dysfunction.

And SARS1 did the exact same thing.

No amount of rehab or mental health support is going to cure physical damage like this. We need medical help AND we need all of the NHS to be on board with this. Patients have had enough of gaslighting and ignorant doctors.

What's the plan to reduce waiting lists for ADHD and autism diagnoses? I've gone private on both mine. It was important to my overall health to get these diagnoses, especially ADHD. My ADHD psychiatrist is of
the opinion that the stress of living into my 50s with undiagnosed (and in the case of ADHD) untreated neurodivergence has contributed to the development of ME/CFS, which has made me too unwell to
work. Most people wait years for diagnoses, which is clearly going to lead to worse outcomes in all sorts of areas of physical and mental health, plus negatively impact most other areas of life such as finances and relationships.

Why are you doing nothing to ensure airborne infection control in healthcare settings? We know COVID and many illnesses are airborne, and yet there is no mandatory masking in place, let alone usage of FFP2 masks, while ventilation and/or air purifier usage is sorely lacking. As a result, hospital acquired infection rates are appalling (Wales collects this data).

Is it so difficult to implement evidence -based infection control measures? By reducing the infection rates in healthcare you'd be relieving the pressure on the NHS, including the numbers of sick staff.

Why aren’t you doing more to reduce hospital-acquired infections? Nobody should risk being infected with a preventable disease while seeking essential medical care.

Wales is the only place still reporting on the nosocomial Covid infections in the UK. Last week 73% of inpatients with Covid caught it in hospital.

How many will die? How many will be left with ongoing debilitating symptoms? It’s simply unacceptable. We need airborne infection control.

I havent had a cervical smear for eleven years. Its just too bloody painful Feels like razor blades.

What are you doing to ensure that all staff working in Social Care, Supported Living and Residentials for People with Autism/Complex Needs & Learning Disabilities have adequate continuous training in Communication, Challenging Behaviour and Managing Personal Care from a Person-centred perspective?

We need knowledgeable, experienced and compassionate staff in this area, to avoid neglect, avoidable illnesses and early deaths.
People with these conditions die 20 years earlier than your average person, usually from an avoidable illness like the Flu, Pneumonia or an urine infection that reachs the kidneys.

Staff in these areas really need a minimum of 2 yrs relevant college education/NVQ rated experience, and are certainly worth more than the minimum wage.

Thanking you or however can answer this in more detail as an older parent.

Hello,

I have got a simple design solution which will help prevent lives being lost and sexual assaults taking place in hospital toilets. It will also help prevent disease spread.

I campaign for the toilet designs that are best for health and safety. The safest have gaps at the top and bottom of doors and partitions. A 15cm gap at the bottom of the toilet door is enough for someone to see the occupant has collapsed - I know because I helped save a young woman because of a door gap.

Health
It has been scientifically proven that there are less pathogens in toilet designs with door gaps. There is increased ventilation and increased ability to clean as the floor can be soaked and mopped. Enclosed, mixed sex designs are worse for potential disease spread:
https://salus.global/article-show/pathogen-findings-raise-concerns-about-move-to-unisex-hospital-facilities

Safety for medically vulnerable
Toilets are the place people go when they feel ill and nauseous. Because of the physiological processes that happen in straining, a lot of people collapse on the toilet. For instance, 11% of cardiac arrests happen on the loo. Hospitals have the greatest resources to save someone having a cardiac arrest, stroke, seizure, hypo etc but only if someone notices in time. It is common to find people on hospital toilet floors but they could be there hours or days.

Preventing misuse is more difficult in completely private toilets. People with poor mental health and drug users are at risk.

Safety for women and children
The number of assaults that happen in hospitals has been collated by WRN. Many going undetected until reported, the exact location of these incidents is not noted but it is reasonable to assume they are happening in private places. https://www.womensrights.network/hospital-report

Because of the Supreme Court ruling and your commitment to single sex wards, we can have single sex toilet designs in communal areas and wards. This means we can get the toilet door and partition gaps back. This is not only important in hospitals but all venue and school designs too which favour complete privacy over health and safety.

My question is: Can you ensure single sex toilets, with gaps at the top and bottom of doors, are prioritised in hospital toilet design?

edit: click on the picture to see the full image

Why are care services so inadequate? What are you going to do about it? When are you going to take responsibility for elder care so that working carers can get in with their own lives? Could you offer a pensions uplift for carers given that so many have to reduce their hours at work?

Will redundancy payments due to your abolishment of NHS England and ICBs come out of NHS budgets or the Treasury ? Which services do you suggest should be cut to fund the huge payment to staff losing their jobs ?

The Parlimentary Inquiry into Birth Trauma made some excellent recommendations last year which the previous government adopted - but this government has ignored them and instead commissioned its own new inquiry. But we know what’s wrong! Why aren’t you getting on with it? The first night of my son’s life was the worst of mine and I have never been able to love the NHS since, because of the terrible care I received. This will keep happening until you act.

On the same theme as @exitlight and @Motnight

Why did you announce the abolition on NHSE and the 50% reduction in ICB in March when there were no plans as to how this would be managed? Six months on, staff in these organisations are no clearer about the future of their jobs. Why does no one in government understand that provision needs to be made for redundancy payments if staff reductions on this scale are to be implemented? Do you think it is acceptable to speak in derogatory terms about NHS managers who represent the ordinary working people you claim to want to support (and many of whom will have voted for you?

Is this another example of mis-management by the Government who were happy to make 'macho' announcements with no thought behind them?

Why are women’s pelvic health services such a Cinderella service. So many women can be helped by specialist physios instead they have to put up with post natal problems, peri and post menopausal issues too.

Please can you take over in Scotland. However bad it is elsewhere, it is worse here. And I do not understand why in Scotland we can’t adopt England’s working NHS app, but are pouring money into reinventing….well. Who knows? Because we don’t have it.

Why has funding for health and social care been kicked into the long grass yet again? It is heart-breaking to see everything my parents worked so hard for being swallowed up in care home fees. My parents were ordinary working people who scrimped and saved to buy their terraced house believing they would be able to help their grandchildren when they died. Virtually everything has been taken to pay for care, even though my mother has late stage dementia and can do nothing for herself.

Despite the tone deaf attempts at including "healthy eating" into the national curriculum, childhood obesity rates continue to rise. Rates of eating disorders are increasing at a disproportionate rate. Children are being failed by mental health services which are under funded and under resourced.

At what point does the government plan to put some meaningful investment into the root causes of young people's mental health issues, particularly eating disorders?

Would the government consider rethinking the "healthy eating" curriculum and replace it with a holistic and genuinely healthy approach which understands that children are often not in control of their diets?

What are you doing to make accessing NHS dental care easier? My children have an NHS dentist but only do emergency appointments currently because half of the dentists have left the practice and then country.
I can't even register with an NHS dentist got kicked off the panel after COVID
The whole dental service sector needs a rethink.

The NHS should mean the NHS. There is no need to have different services across the UK. Those each side of the border receive different services, it is confusing and unfair.

Why does it take so long to get a definitive diagnosis of prostate cancer? My DH was referred in the second week of May, we have known since mid June that he has advanced prostate cancer, but it has still not been decided how far and where it has spread, so we are unlikely to get that clarified before October at the earliest and we have already been told he is unlikely to receive any treatment before next year!

When are GPs going to be given extra training on womens health which has been much neglected in medical training over the years?

And when, of when, will there be more money for prevention?!!!!

I’m a GP who can’t get a job (despite applying for many many posts in the past two years), but I’m also a patient and I know how hard it can be to get an appointment.

How is he going to fix this situation? It’s such a waste (& I’m very much not alone in this, its a national crisis).