Whether there is or isn't depends on your perspective. There may well beno crisis for people who insist on putting the NHS funding deficit into"perspective". It's a mere one per cent of total turnover, says healthsecretary Patricia Hewitt.
And nobody will lose their job - at least not in the Department ofHealth - if trusts can still meet their targets for hip replacements,corneal implants or radiotherapy, and any cuts can be confined to areaswhere targets are not quite so rigorous. So children's wards are beingclosed, school nursing and health visitor posts frozen, neonatalservices cut back, and the axe held over services for children withdisabilities (Children Now, 5-11 April).
The investment and huge gains made in child and adolescent mental healthservices in recent years also now stand a high chance of being negatedby the closure of inpatient and community facilities in order tocompensate for overspending in other areas (see feature, p20).
So, no crisis. After all, there is record funding going into theNHS.
Yet the cuts now proposed or under way will cause misery for thousandsof families, and the real cost will be measured in future years aschildren and young people grow up to be even less healthy than theirparents, and even more people with mental health problems end up in thecriminal justice system.
The disarray within primary care trusts, especially, is likely to have asevere effect on their ability to engage with local authorities on theEvery Child Matters agenda, to play their proper role in children'strusts, and to deploy the resources needed to make children's centresthe hubs of easy-to-access, co-located preventative services they wereintended to be.
Luckily, all this coincides with the run-up to the local elections inMay. The sector has the opportunity over the next few weeks to ensurethat local and national politicians see what is happening in terms ofits human cost rather than as a percentage of turnover, even if PatriciaHewitt and her top officials refuse to.
