Signed. Speech therapy is a great way of spending tax payers money – it makes a big difference to people’s lives at relatively little cost.

I know this is a different thing – but it’s in a related area. I’d like to see more being spent on communication skills – a great many young offenders exhibit very poor communication skills – they are both unable to express themselves and unable to understand what’s being said to them.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6449511.stm

http://www.johnbercow.co.uk/01052007_young_offenders_provision_of_speech_therapy_bill

1. Luis Enrique
Yes, quite. My daughter’s primary school (where I was a governor) specialised in educating children with ‘language and communications difficulties’ – at one stage they were in the ‘unit’ but gradually became integrated with the mainstream school. So I’ve a vague idea of the issues, and agree speech therapy’s a really essential service.

It’s not just the therapy itself, it’s raising awareness too. I’ve lost count of the number of people who responded to my mention of the ‘language and communications difficulties’ with comments like ‘oh, yes, we’ve got 40 different languages spoken at our school’, ‘you mean, asylum speakers?’ (ans: yes, but only if they’ve got autism, cerebral palsy, mutism, etc) and even ‘bah! they shouldn’t be letting them in to the country if they can’t speak English’. Sigh (bangs head on desk).

I will sign the petition forthwith!

Signed. I’m disabled, my friends who can’t speak have worked with wonderful speech therapists who have provided very valuable support to them and their parents. I’ve also linked to this post at my blog, Same Difference, so hopefully you can get even more support that way.

Also signed. Can someone just remind me who the MP for Southwark is? Sorry -just remembered: it’s Simon Hughes. Has he signed the petition … as he did the one on tuition fees?

Why is the PCT cutting this service rather than another? And is there really no bureaucratic fat that could have been cut instead?

Signed.

I think Luis has it right: “it makes a big difference to people’s lives at relatively little cost.”

But it is one of the failings of the NHS, in my view, that whilst it makes a good go at improving quantity of life (as it were), it does so little to improve the overall quality of life – so it’s vitally important to hang onto such services as do exist.

“Hi, you don’t know me, but I’m a speech and language therapist and I’d like five minutes of your time…”

Hi, I don’t know you, but you sound like you’re selling second-hand cars, or ludicrously overpriced fruit-based drinks. Jesus tap-dancing Christ, why do people write like this?

I agree it’s a valid service.

Give me one example where you would cut and I’ll sign

“But a third of our department in Southwark have been put on notice of redundancy because the funding that used to be given to the local authority and ring-fenced for Sure Start is no longer protected.”

Do I take it from this the money’s still coming, just not ring fenced? In which case it’s up to Southwark’s Labour council to say where it stands on protecting such a valuable service.

Sorry – is the strike about your jobs (i.e. a good thing to strike about) or is about the standard of public services (which might conceivably be harmed by their withdrawal through a strike…)? I can respect the first (striking is an essential right for workers), but the second implies that you should be making the choices about what the public purse is spent upon, rather than our elected representatives (whether the people making these actual cuts are elected representatives or not is an issue we could actually usefully discuss). Not sure I agree with this…

“Why is the PCT cutting this service rather than another? And is there really no bureaucratic fat that could have been cut instead?”

Because it’s picking on the disabled season.

There probably is fat that could be cut, but the scale of the cuts required ,combined with the internal politics, means services that are not understood or appreciated go first.

“Give me one example where you would cut and I’ll sign”

Maximum wage of any civil servant to be 100k. Deal?

#9

Actually I was hoping the OP would respond; I fear that in the present situation some services have to be cut, so, if this is just an anti-cut rant then i can’t go along with it, if, on the other hand it’s someone making a point that this particular service should be saved then my original question still stands.

As far as your point is concerned I agree.

“d; I fear that in the present situation some services have to be cut, so, if this is just an anti-cut rant then i can’t go along with it,”

I think you need to bear in mind that not everyone has access to the detailed accounts of government spending (nor the expertise in economic modelling to measure impacts of spending decisions in one area on others). So the anti-cuts campaign is only going to be able to speak in broad terms. Hence if we accept some services are to be cut, many are quite happy to accept further cuts to military spending, and increased taxes on the city (again most probably don’t have the technical knowledge to go into details). Put simply, even if we accept the need to balance the budget on the timescale required, welfare cuts of 30% (which the above comes under) whilst defence spending only gets 7% are unacceptable. If you want to know what the alternative is, then reversing those figures would be a start.

Indeed there have often been long lists of spending cuts and tax rises that would be acceptable to people on here, but without the detailed knowledge, few are going to be able to get costings with decent levels of accuracy. This is why the leadership of the labour party has been poor – they are the ones with the detailed knowledge and ability to produce an alternative that would expose the conservatives as doing this for ideological reasons rather than economic necessity.

sl – We’re only striking to highlight why this service should be kept, not enter into a discussion about what should be (if anything). We just wanted to add our voice to the debate, since services like ours are not often ones you hear much about.

Watchman – “Sorry – is the strike about your jobs (i.e. a good thing to strike about) or is about the standard of public services (which might conceivably be harmed by their withdrawal through a strike…)?”

It is about both those things. Cutting the jobs in Southwark will inevitably have a negative impact on the quality of service we can offer – but it is that quality of service and the effect on children and families, often in difficult circumstances, that we are mainly concerned about. These are people that are largely unable to complain or make a big fuss themselves, so we wanted to speak up for them.

Everyone else – thank you all for your replies and support.

Sorry – that opening sentence shoud have read, “We’re only striking to highlight why this service should be kept, not enter into a discussion about what should be cut (if anything). We just wanted to add our voice to the debate, since services like ours are not often ones you hear much about.

Good luck with your strike and ongoing campaign. A few people have commented on what cuts could/should be made to save this service, well what difference does that make? It is not the OP’s writer job to make that call, surely we an all see that that this is a good service, irrespective of what other cuts can be made? It is the council’s job to come up with proposals and it up to people of the relevant borough to tell the council what they think of them. If the council cannot find cuts that do not affect frontline services, they can always resign and walk away from it all and let others do the job.

Take care ‘Guest’ and good luck.

Have signed it and good luck with the outcome.

My brother in law had two serious strokes and had help from a speech therapist to deal with speech and swallowing problems.

Signed. Good luck with this.

I’ve signed the petition. All the best with your fight.