UK: Social prescribing on the NHS (and possible implications for ME/CFS services)

Agree this is a big issue. I'm unaware of how it is 'planning services' rather than just being a signpost to whatever might already be out there. Which leaves huge accessibility gaps, and well as functional needs unmet.

Worse the fact is that it conceals this by its presence so people can't even just say there is nothing, or prove it. I think that those with ME/CFS (and probably a few other similar conditions) need specific services commissioned and designed otherwise there is an equality act issue on some pretty major things.

EDIT*:although if the right people were in place and they were enabled and not ignored they could indeed be collecting this 'user-side information' and be able to flag where certain things are well-resourced vs complete gaps e.g. for those who are home-based or have other difficulties, or certain functional services being over-subscribed etc.

ALso a funding inequality if, and I don't know how it is funded, a yearly budget isn't divided equally because noone is ring-fenced to be accessible or dedicated to certain essential things and all these choirs and gardening groups get funding 'because they are there' and it's just a yearly sum to be spent on whatever comes through.

Questions such as whether money that would otherwise go to services like the CAB is key. But even there the issue seems to be the voluntary nature of those who are 'the product' in current climates.

So there is more and more 'hollowing out' because the one bit that is essential isn't funded whilst all the 'surround and signposting' is.

 

@Trish

 

The Secretariat for this APPG is Dentons Global Advisors with support from the National Hair and Beauty Federation, the Federation of Holistic Therapists and spabreaks.com.

Disquiet about APPGs is growing and has been mentioned before on the ME APPG thread. This group looks like exactly the sort of meretricious industry special pleading which merits a clampdown (even, to my mind, if “our” APPG suffers as a result; the ME community is dogged and robust enough to find legitimate ways to corral Westminster support).

 

SCAM

Bit on the nose. But really, there is zero difference between referring people to any of those alternative medicines and the BPS approach. Quackery is quackery. They equally lack evidence, and are equally boasted about as being effective by their respective professionals, using the loose definition of professional as this being their primary income.

How do they not see this? This is what I don't get. They can't possibly not see the problem with scientific medicine destroying its only legitimate claim to expertise: scientific validity. Once they adopted pseudoscience, there is only one way forward. Down, all the way down. It's the bad apples being distributed throughout the whole bunch so that it can spoil every bit of it.

Modern medicine is now some mix of scientific medicine and alternative medicine. Equal where it matters: where patients meet the system. This is legitimately disastrous. But the violin solos, though. So beautiful as the city burns.

 

A few years ago an editor pointed out to me that in my discussion of some quantum mechanical metaphysics I had written back-peddling when I meant back-pedalling.

Seems to me you meant special-peddling, not special pleading!!

 

No, definitely special pedalling. By recyclers of woo, or at least their spokes-people.