City & Hackney Mental Health Trust wants to become a foundation trust. And as a service user, it wants my opinion on the idea.
I'll certainly give it that. Mental health services here - as everywhere else no doubt - are horribly underfunded, leaving poeple waiting six months or more for a first appointment. I can think of things that the trust does need, more money for starters, but becoming a foundation is the one thing that will make it worse not better.
It's enough to drive you over the edge.
Mind you, I wouldn't trust that my opinions will be taken into account at all. My partner contributed his views to the consultation on whether Homerton Hospital should become a foundation hospital. At the end of the process, they wrote to him, telling him that most of the respondents had, like him, opposed the idea. They would take his views on board, they said, and go ahead anyway.
Consultation and democracy. There's a difference, hey?
