Opinion: Volunteering and community service are vital for building stronger, more connected communities
As our Health Campaign reaches over 600 participants, I asked one of our newest members to share their personal perspective of healthcare in the town...
After volunteering with LBVPT (Leighton Buzzard Voluntary Patient Transport), I quickly became aware of the lack of NHS clinical facilities within Leighton Buzzard, mainly due to the large number of patients who need to travel outside of Leighton Buzzard for treatment.
This prompted me to join the LLHPG (Leighton Linslade Health Provision Group), again, all volunteers, to see if I could help in any way in establishing a much-needed new facility in the town with services the current clinic in Bassett Road does not offer for reasons of capacity, staffing, finance or equipment.
The 3 doctors surgeries appear busy all the time and their work valued by residents, but they don’t generally offer the kind of specialised facilities a Health Centre can offer. All three surgeries have a PPG (Patient Participation Group) whose members are all volunteers and they are also members of the LBPPN (Leighton Buzzard Patient Participation Network) which meets regularly to help to unify their purpose. These groups work with the practices, critically and sympathetically, in order to identify priorities for patients and contribute to proposals for any improvements or changes within practices.
Doubtless you will have already noticed the numerous different abbreviations and sadly, I can assure you there are more to come! I can say I found remembering them all a little daunting, initially.
All these groups try to work with and if required, pressurise Central Bedfordshire Council to pursue better clinical availability in the area. This, in turn, leads to the NHS organisation, the BLMKICB (Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes Integrated Care Board) and soon to be three times larger as Central East ICB. This commission is responsible for organising care and resources to better health outcomes for the area.
Looking at all of this and its complicated relationships, the ordinary citizen, local and national politics and the NHS itself makes it all quite the melting pot with characters, heroes, narrators and ‘frenemies’ abound!
I have to say the history of all the effort, hard work, petitioning etc. from local volunteers cannot be understated and getting one's head around it all is quite the experience!
What is clear is that Leighton-Linslade needs better health provision than where it is now and everyone can play a part, no matter how small. After all, it is your future…