Gosh, I always thought the people who run our health services were there to help the most vulnerable in society, not to put the fear of God into them.
Yet that is exactly what the high heid-yins in Aberdeenshire have done by tabling savage cuts aimed firmly at the elderly and folk needing additional support.
Of course, the £20 million scorched earth policy with some services facing cuts up to 70% could just be that old smoke and mirrors wheeze some organisations pull at budget time.
You know the one, put Armageddon on the table so folk sigh and go “that’s not so bad” when things don’t go down the nuclear option. It’s a sleekit way to get the good ol’ taxpayers to accept what should unpalatable cuts.
But as it stands, Aberdeenshire Health and Social Care Partnership has old folk firmly in their sights, potentially slashing council-run care homes for older folk and slashing home carers, too.
And all without flinching at the misery that will cause and the knock on it will have on other already struggling health services.
Are we just supposed to leave people to rot in their golden years?
Our population is ageing because we are all living longer thanks to the sterling work the NHS does all through our lives. To achieve what? Leave folk to rot when they are in what’s supposed to be their golden years.
Nowhere decent to live, no home carers who provide a lifeline for the frail and isolated, no respite for carers who are often at their wits’ end? How cruel.
It makes you wonder why the health service spends so much time telling folk not to smoke, drink or eat too much if the end result is just a shrug of the shoulders and ‘sorry, we’re skint, just get on with it, grandpa’.
If they do need to save money then perhaps they might want to look a bit harder at what needs cutting. The health service is full of wonderful, gifted, compassionate people giving it their all to look after folk, often in an NHS where services are teetering on the brink.
And behind them, in cosy offices, is an army of middle management, bureaucrats and bean counters saying ‘do more with less’. I’m pretty sure the NHS could do a lot more with a lot less of these faceless penpushers.
Get rid of the desk jockeys and put more doctors, nurses, and carers where they need to be – hands-on with people who need a medic, not an administrator.
Fingers crossed that the idea of cutting into the bone is just a bluff. But if it isn’t, we need to start asking very hard questions about who exactly is doing what with our money in the health services we pay for.
Scott Begbie is a journalist and editor, as well as PR and comms manager for Aberdeen Inspired.
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