Partners from the North West London Integrated Care System attended the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea adult Social Care and Health Select Committee on Thursday 3 March 2022 to brief Councillors on the progress of the engagement exercise and the current position of the Pembridge Palliative Care Centre in-patient beds and answered questions. You can see the papers and recording of the meeting here.
Points made include:
- Need to understand impact of closure of Pembridge Palliative Care Centre in-patient beds on population of North Kensington and adjoining areas. How are they being accommodated. Are relatives finding they have to travel much further. How have things changed for individuals?
- Level of activity in the home and community has increased due to redirection of staff from Pembridge inpatient unit. Need to understand what that looks like for future modelling.
- General agreement that helping people to stay in their own homes is a good thing and if the NHS is saying that the level of care in the community has increased because of the closure of the inpatient beds you should say so. People want this, they don’t want to go to hospital but they need somewhere to go if they are unable to care for themselves at home and this is why they also want the beds back at Pembridge.
- Its right to consult people but sometimes it feels that you are over-consulting and the longer it goes on you are hoping people will forget and that you will exhaust the very strong feeling in the community that they want the in-patients beds back.
- Paper is much better as you show that you understand where the opposition is coming from.
- In the previous four borough review we said that 48% of people who needed palliative care did not make contact with the service.
- Need to take into account the patient stories and learn them.
- People want wraparound care with the flexibility to change their mind.
- Wish to understand how funding of services and hospices work and the split between charitable and NHS funding – taking into account hospice sensitivities around this.
- Concern that local needs will outweighed by NW London needs.
We committed to further engagement with the local residents and RBKC making use of Integrated Care Partnership meeting opportunities.