A quite surprising email popped into my Inbox last night from Worcestershire County Council, following the email of complaint that I sent to them complaining about the fact that they were charging for services for Meg 6\u00bd days after she actually died. I have been informed that my complaint has been sent for allocation under the Statutory Complaints Procedure for Adults Social Care and that they will endeavour to get me a response within 35 working days (which is, of course, seven weeks) I must say that I thought that a complaint of this nature could have been deal with by a finance officer taking a simple decision and adjustment but this full bureaucratic procedure seems somewhat like overkill to me. As with other agencies, I shall just have to wait patiently to see what emerges out of the system. Yesterday morning, my son who is incredibly well informed about all things pension related, had a fairly lengthy discussion discussing the small proportion of Meg’s additional state pension that I may have inherited. We both of us are trying to backfill an explanation for the figures provided to us by the DWP and by the Inland revenue which do not quite agree with each other in any case but I think we are both of the view that it is probably wiser to let sleeping dogs lie and accept gratefully anything that appears to be on offer. My son popped around this morning and apart from sorting out the NHS app on my phone and installing the face recognition on it, we also make some adjustments in the car to the driver’s seating position and the Head-Up display that displays current speed and relevant speed limits on the screen in front of you. We adjusted this ]so that it was a little bit lower and a bit less b right thus making it somewhat less obtrusive whilst still remaining completely visible to the driver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The government attempted a big launch of their new 10-year plans to ‘save’ the NHS although their announcements were completely drowned out by the reports of the death of the young Liverpool footballer, Diogo Jota. Surrounded by NHS staff for his announcement, the prime minister explained that his government will fix the health service by moving care into the community, digitising the NHS, and focusing on sickness prevention. The aim is to shift care away from under-pressure medical facilities and closer to people’s homes, while taking measures to prevent people needing treatment in the first place. One concept that is being advocated is that of the ‘Neighbourhood Health Team’ What is very unclear at this stage is whether this is going to be based upon new buildings (which will be expensive and take time to build) or whether the concept if a virtual\/organisational one in which case not a great deal may actually change in the short term. One suspects that a lot of fine words are being written but this is a case where getting hold of the document (or a good summary of the document) may be worthwhile. Considerable play is being made of an expanded NHS app where people may be able to access services such as doctor’s appointments directly. But my own NHS app having seemingly worked correctly in the past is now just displaying a blank screen so I suspect that I may have to reinstall it (and this is not an easy procedure as several layers of protection are built into it and we never did get Meg’s app working before she died)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before lunch, I thought I had better make a start on clearing up the patio that we have immediately to the rear of the house. I needed to tie up the large spreading ‘lavatera’ shrub which grows quickly with a profusion of flowers but where the stems are quite brittle. I wired together some of the branches to form a sort of screen and keep the flowers clear of the path and then had to remove a couple of shrubs in pots that had not survived the fierce heat of the last few days. Then I succeeded in tidying up some of the leaves, weeds and clutter thar accumulated in a corner of the patio and this should make the rest of the job easier to achieve now the most difficult part has been done. I probably spent more than a half hour doing my gardening allocation for the day but at least the weather has cooled down a bit and strong a strong breeze is blowing. I made myself a mackerel salad lunch and as soon as I had finished this, I got a most welcome call from one of Meg’s cadre of young workers. These young carers developed quite a deep bond of affection for Meg and myself and this was reciprocal so it is always delightful to see any of them when they pop in, often between calls that they might have in Bromsgrove.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was tempted to go outside and do a bit more patio tidying but I stayed in because I was expecting a delivery at any time after lunch of a large oak chest which is a sort of family heirloom. My father had acquired this at some time and after his death and the clearance of his house, it found its way into my sister’s hall where it has stayed for what I would estimate is about thirty-five years. Now that my sister’s house is having to be sold after my sister has entered residential care, one of my nephews and hs wife have very kindly arranged for the transportation of the said chest where it is adorning my hall at the moment. The two guys who delivered it had hardly any English and could not really understand me when I asked if they had any difficulties with the SatNav in order to reach me. Once they had departed, I texted my nephew’s wife and then gave the whole chest a clean with a special silicone-free wood polish. I then took a snap of it and stitched it into the website that I maintain to keep a record of the furniture I have bought to populate the Music Lounge. Then I transmitted the link to my nephew and is wife so that they could see that the furniture had been safely delivered and now, when I have a moment, I will try to discern its provenance. The carved wooden figures on the back could be either Dutch or mediaeval and the ships’ wheels that adorn some of the panels suggest a maritime connection as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A quite surprising email popped into my Inbox last night from Worcestershire County Council, following the email of complaint that I sent to them complaining about the fact that they were charging for services for Meg 6\u00bd days after she actually died. I have been informed that my complaint has been sent for allocation under […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7503"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7504,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7503\/revisions\/7504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}