“There’s no school tomorrow” announced my 8 year old
the other day. Panic seized me like a python around my neck. Hyperventilating at
the idea of arranging last minute childcare, I had a transient flash of
lucidity. “There’s nothing about that in the school bulletin?” I said
doubtfully, realising said bulletin had been languishing at the bottom of my
child’s book bag for days. “It’s a strike,” he said casually, “we balloted for
it today”. My heart sank like a brick as I braced myself for a call from the
head master.
Some back story. My 8 year old was very cross when he discovered
(in First News) that he’d missed the
memo about the recent national children’s strike. He’s against academies, and
tests of any kind of course, so he felt robbed of his day off school, I mean,
day of protest.
With squinted eyes my disgruntled son sought to
extract my motives for preventing him from going on strike. I explained that
strike action is borne of a collective decision taken locally by a representative group
or body having balloted its members. That was the conversation we had a couple
of weeks ago.
Fast forward to this week and my child has put a
notice on the school gates declaring tomorrow a day of strike action. For the
NHS, no less. The “ballot” consisted of a petition to “Save our A&E” and,
having gained several signatures from children and staff alike, the designated
representative group (the Secret 7…which is more like the secret 17 because no-one
who wants to join is excluded) voted in favour of strike action. To top it all,
I was to blame.
Last week, I had been gathering baby booties from
parents with small children at the school gates. The local Clinical
Commissioning Group (CCG) were meeting last Tuesday in a fourth attempt to axe
our A&E (the local health campaign group, of which I’m a member, thwarted
three previous attempts). We knew the good men and women on the board who had
previously voted against the (un)accountable officer (the boss), had
come under intense pressure from above, so we didn’t expect a positive outcome
this time.
We had submitted compelling evidence and had won the
rational, clinical and intellectual argument. We needed a plan B now, to win hearts,
as well as minds. Hence the baby booties. I arrived at the board meeting armed
with 20 pairs of baby shoes and divvied them out amongst the public. The room
was packed. My every move was watched by communications people whose job it was
to spin the meeting to within an inch of its life. There were more PR people on
the premises than there were doctors in the hospital.
I sat in the front row with my child’s first pair of
moccasins. They were no bigger than the palm of my hand. I was there to speak
up for him and the other children in this county who, had the A&E not
existed, might not be alive today. Many of the booties came with a story of a
child who had, at some point, fought for their life in the back of an ambulance.
I realised I couldn’t share them all but I had to tell one. Joshua’s mum had thrust his tiny shoes in my
hand and said, “Put these in front of the chairman” and tell him my child’s
story.
Doctors who become directors (CCG members are mostly
clinicians) have conflicting interests. As doctors, their Hippocratic oath, Do no harm, takes precedence. As
directors, corporate law dictates that finances and saving money trumps saving
lives. The sterile boardroom arena, with spreadsheets and acronyms abound, is
designed to keep the human element out of the decision making. I wanted to
bring some humanity into the room, to remind doctors that the decisions they
made would determine the fate of real children (as opposed to stats on a
spreadsheet). Vulnerable human beings who depend on our generation to make the
right decisions and leave them with a local health service that’s fit for
purpose.
The public were reminded, “This is a meeting in
public, not a public meeting”, which means we’re not allowed to speak unless or
until the chairman says so. There’s the occasional display of low level civil
disobedience, such as a local woman in her 80’s who regularly interrupts ever
so politely with variations on the following, “I’m terribly sorry and I don’t
mean to be rude…., followed inevitably by,….”but you’re talking total nonsense”,
or “this is a farce”, thus the scene is set for theatre (heckling the baddies
and clapping the goodies).
We waited patiently and then the public was granted 30
minutes to speak. Not nearly long enough for all the hands up but, that was our
lot. The chair prevented the razor sharp, forensically informed chairwoman of
the health campaign from speaking until the final moments. But when she spoke, it was Hollywood gold. It
was like being in a courtroom, listening to the closing arguments by an
impassioned lawyer. Speaking as though her own life depended on it (it may well
do), she set out a compelling case not to sign the death warrant of her client.
In this case, the NHS. Nye Bevan would be proud. The rapturous applause turned
to shouts of protest and slow clapping, when the chair malevolently announced
he was drawing the public’s time to a close. Not only was he cutting our time
short, he had allowed the (un) accountable officer to speak for 15 of our 30
minutes.
I stood up but the chair, seeing me
armed with my BMDs (booties of mass destruction), tried to prevent me from
speaking. Refusing to give me the mic I was forced to raise my voice to be
heard as the meeting descended into chaos. This is Joshua’s story:
Joshua, age 2, had a severe fit a couple of weeks ago.
He’s had a number of fits. Previously first responders came and waited with his
distraught mother while an ambulance arrived. The wait is usually 15 minutes.
On this occasion the ambulance took over 30 minutes during which time he
stopped breathing. The first responder didn’t arrive.
First responders are increasingly not turning up,
especially in critical cases. They’re local volunteers, trained in basic first
aid only. They know ambulances are taking longer & longer to arrive &
they didn’t sign up to holding people in their arms as they die.
In the ambulance Joshua turned blue and developed a
rash. Paramedics changed route to allow them to get to the nearest A&E
(having closed the children’s ward in our local hospital, children are now
forced to travel almost twice the distance to get to another hospital). They
made it clear that the best interests of the child was paramount & that
meant getting to the nearest A&E as quickly as possible. Mothers at the
school are terrified. If they shut our A&E, our children wouldn’t have that
option and they could die.
Even healthy
children are vulnerable to medical crises, such as anaphylactic allergic
reactions, asthma, meningitis etc,
where speed of access to A&E is of the essence.
While I was speaking, people slowly emerged, like
ghosts, from the public gallery and placed the baby booties on the table in
front of the board. The solemnity and stillness of their movements was
incredibly poignant. More so than I’d imagined when we’d planned it. I took my
seat with the others and waited for the vote. To our astonishment, it was
another victory and, even though we know the threat has not entirely
disappeared, we savoured the moment. One of the board members approached me
afterwards to say the blue fluffy booties I put in his hands made him think of
his 2 year old. (I had reached out to him in particular because I thought he
was one of the incredible doctors who treated my child in hospital).
The BBC had surreptitiously captured it all on a
mobile phone and it was broadcast twice that evening. My son had seen it, which
inspired his petition. Fortunately, by the time we got back to school, the rain
had washed away any traces of the strike notice. The only evidence of a child’s
thwarted rebellion clung to the tarmac, the blue ink bleeding a trail of
destruction on a pulverised shred of white mulch paper.
