Rosanna Preston on the Health and Social Care Bill

Yesterday I attended a very interesting workshop on NHS Public and Patient Engagement in London. At the moment there are 10 regional and one national Specialised Commissioning Groups (SCGs) across England commissioning specialist medical services, including cleft lip and palate care, and this meeting was hosted by the London SCG. The role of the London SCG is to “plan, procure and performance monitor” services and there are opportunities for patients to get involved in all these stages.

Sue McLellen, Chief Operating Officer of the London SCG gave a very clear explanation of how the new Health and Social Care Bill will change the way services are commissioned in the future. When the Bill is implemented there will be 4 regional boards, including one for London and a National Commissioning Board looking after all the specialized services including cleft lip and palate.

There won’t be major changes to the cleft lip and palate service – in fact it will be one of the first services to move into the new structure because it is well understood and defined and patients may not see any difference. However by April 2013 the aim is that there will be one standard service specification for services across the whole of England, the benefit of this is that there will be no “postcode lottery" and all parts of England will receive the same service, but obviously it is important that the service specification lists all the areas of treatment needed and the costs involved to make sure there is enough money in the budget to pay for them.

CLAPA will represent patients throughout this process to make sure that the final national service meets the needs of people with cleft lip and palate. We will raise the issues of: treatment for adults, lack of psychology services in some areas and difficulties in accessing local services such as speech and language therapy after an assessment by the cleft team.

If you would like to know more about this process and how you can get involved or if there are particular issues you think we should raise, please email: