United Kingdom: Neighbourhood Health Centres

Binkie4

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Copied from the forum thread for the UK Government Delivery Plan for ME/CFS


The delivery plan made reference to neighbourhood services. Below is the press release describing these services. It's worth reading the whole press release. How unfortunate that we didn't know about this so we could input ideas before the delivery plan for ME was finalised. It makes a mockery of the whole plan but - did you know- "the government has hit the ground running." Now we know why we didn't have a plan.

(bolding mine)
Press release (9/7/25)

Government takes action to deliver neighbourhood health services​

The government hits the ground running on delivering the 10 Year Health Plan by taking the first steps in the rollout of new neighbourhood services.
From:Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England and The Rt Hon Wes Streeting MPPublished9 July 2025

s300_carer-and-woman-with-walking-stick-on-patio-steps.jpg

  • Ground-breaking neighbourhood health services to be delivered in most-deprived areas first, where healthy life expectancy is lowest
  • Government hits ground running on delivering 10 Year Health Plan, beginning in deprived communities with greatest need
  • Pioneering neighbourhood health teams will focus on patients with multiple long-term conditions and more complex issues
People living in the most deprived communities across the country are set to benefit from new neighbourhood health services as the government takes the first steps in the roll-out today (9 July 2025), making care more convenient and reducing health inequalities.

Central to the 10 Year Health Plan, the services will bring NHS care closer to home and provide better support for people with complex conditions, keeping them well and avoiding unnecessary hospital trips.

One example is Team Up Derbyshire, an initiative which links up GPs, social workers, home carers and nurses to support people who need care in their own homes - bringing the best of the NHS to the rest of the NHS.

The government has hit the ground running on delivering the plan, today writing to health chiefs and local authority chief executives, urging them to team up with local health and care providers, voluntary groups and members of their communities to accelerate the rollout of the services across the country.

They have been asked to submit applications, outlining examples of joined-up working and innovation in their areas, to join phase 1 of the neighbourhood health programme.

This will prepare local partnerships to take on responsibility for more neighbourhood services in their area. It will see successful applicants join an intensive national coaching programme over the summer, including major workshop days that bring together experts, GPs and their teams, patients, the voluntary sector and local authorities.

Health and Social Care Secretary, Wes Streeting, said:

Our 10 Year Health Plan committed to building a Neighbourhood Health Service, and we’re hitting the ground running on delivering it.

If we are to get patients cared for faster, on their doorstep and even in their own home, then we need to shift the focus of the NHS from hospitals to the community.

Today, we are issuing an open invitation to local authorities and health services to become pioneer neighbourhood health services and lead the charge of healthcare reform.

As part of our Plan for Change, we’re beginning the Neighbourhood Health Service in areas of greatest need first, to tackle the unfair health inequalities that blight our country.
From September, the first 42 sites will then immediately start rolling out their neighbourhood health programmes, with clear guidance, support and metrics to report on regularly.

The department and NHS England will work with over 40 places across the country and ensure each region is covered by the programme. The services will be prioritised in working-class areas where healthy life expectancy is lowest, targeting communities with the greatest need first.

After years of neglect, areas where people need the NHS most often have the fewest GPs, the worst performing services and the longest waits. People in working-class areas and coastal towns spend more of their lives in ill health, and life expectancy among women with the lowest incomes has fallen in recent years, after decades of progress.

Neighbourhood health services will bring together teams of professionals to focus on patients with multiple long-term conditions and people with complex needs.

A joint taskforce has been set up between the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England to drive progress, chaired by Sir John Oldham and made up of NHS leaders, local authority bosses, and other key figures from the voluntary sector and health and care organisations.

In addition to the neighbourhood health services that will begin in September, the government is also working to deliver neighbourhood health centres across the country over the course of the government’s 10 Year Health Plan to rebuild the NHS.

Pioneering teams - some based entirely under one roof - will be set up in local communities to dramatically improve access to the health service, and will include staff like nurses, doctors, social care workers, pharmacists, health visitors, palliative care staff and paramedics. Community health workers and volunteers will also play a pivotal role in these teams.

Millions of patients will be treated and cared for by teams of health professionals, and in years to come, local neighbourhood health centres will relieve pressure on overstretched hospitals and provide cutting-edge, personalised care.

Eventually these health centres will be open 12 hours a day, 6 days a week within local communities, and will not only bring historically hospital-based services into the community - diagnostics, post-operative care and rehab - but will also offer services like debt advice, employment support and stop smoking or weight management, all of which will help tackle issues which we know affect people’s health.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
keeping them well and avoiding unnecessary hospital trips.
I find this a bit concerning because I see it as another way to triage us out of the healthcare system and avoid us getting access to specialists for our various problems. A local team with one person having training in module 1 isn't exactly going to solve our problems with healthcare. This all just sounds like smaller hospitals that don't contain as many specialisms.
 
I'm just aghast at the speed and the duplicity. On 22nd July we were expecting a long promised plan for ME. Yes, neighbourhood centres were mentioned but not expected in the form of the centres in that press release. I see that that was released on the 9th July and the ME delivery plan followed. But they weren't pulled together.
We were expecting and promised a plan for ME not a multi focussed everything for everyone. Had anyone pulled it all together? I feel we've - everyone in the ME field- been deliberately misled.


Setting all this up nationwide will take time and money. What access to medical care will those with ME have in the meantime? BACME practitioners. I am at a loss for words.
 
I'm just aghast at the speed and the duplicity. On 22nd July we were expecting a long promised plan for ME. Yes, neighbourhood centres were mentioned but not expected in the form of the centres in that press release. I see that that was released on the 9th July and the ME delivery plan followed. But they weren't pulled together.
We were expecting and promised a plan for ME not a multi focussed everything for everyone. Had anyone pulled it all together? I feel we've - everyone in the ME field- been deliberately misled.


Setting all this up nationwide will take time and money. What access to medical care will those with ME have in the meantime? BACME practitioners. I am at a loss for words.
the response from Liz Kendal to Tessa Munt in parliament that there is a video on social media made it sound like they knew something like this was in the rounds, and that was how I interpreted it (that it was the same old assumptions - we say something perhaps meaning cutting edge research is needed for there to be any treatments, but it is heard as 'research on how to help us all get back to work rehab, just like the old stuff but works better this time')

because noone has been really underlining - in the way that Carol MOnaghan did - that step-change in how the illness is perceived that needs to take place in these intervening years. It needed to move from being seen as people being fatigued, even if it is mild or moderate, to something that puts it in the same bracket as the other serious illnesses that probably when they are at similar levels have similar levels of debilitation with/without the medications that are available these days.

We haven't really managed to move that conversation out of the box those we are talking to assume it is in with our language.
 
And no I'm not surprised by this at all. ANyone involved should have seen this coming. I knew 8 years ago that the big thing most GPs etc were talking about was 'Vanguard practices' back then, and for reasons including the issue of what a job being a partner had become (some of those back then were going to be linked to trusts, but I'm not sure that came off), but also the evergreen phrase of the 'one stop shop'.

Add in that practices linked into groupings to deliver vaccines if they weren't already anyway, and have used that for things like sharing things like physios or OT or psych or whatnot then this is exactly where it was going to go unless people were explicitly making sure they underlined not doing this in the implementation groups?

We were always going to be the default illness bunged into these things too because of history and culture from certain individuals who seem to either still be listened to or have influenced those who are now (and assume all that was fine, cos after all they aren't the bigots, they are the kind ones for 'taking fibro and cfs seriously by having something' ie the bigotry was sold as the 'not stigma because thye don't call it yuppie flu').

They still want to just do the 'MUS' stuff relabelled as 'long term conditions' but it rarely including eg Parkinsons, MS - I don't know whether these will get dumped in there? Or if its just certain codnitions + those who had their cancer treated by some local centre and then left with after-effects which aren't covered so it then, like the 'fatigue cetnres' now do, just being lumped in

Putting ME/CFS with long covid and talking about big numbers who might get it, I think made us more of a sitting duck and stopped any chance of us flying under the radar with something that focused on the most severe first and built from there as serious healthcare (which then could avoid people getting to those severe levels should eg medications be found or research work out what it is) and probably removes the chance of separation from 'chronic fatigue' or 'PPS' or 'who care what they have, we won't get to the bottom of it' 'just treat the symptoms, but only in the ways we approve of whether they are counter-productive or not' type stuff.
 
There was research that was being talked about on Twitter by Keith Gerraighty in OCt 2024 that was on having centres where it was GPs doing the 'telling us to focus on less' in a 'special local centre' instead of HCPs, that had been in the pipeline being done for time before that.

This is the project page: https://sheffield.ac.uk/ctru/comple... is,“medically unexplained” physical symptoms.

the project itself was published in the lancet late 2024 (link in this page) but I can't get full access to that so having to rely on Keith's tweets.








I'dd clicked through on this specific tweet because it was the first one in the trail that had a link to an actual paper I could access



1753146390319.png
 
Last edited:
A local team with one person having training in module 1 isn't exactly going to solve our problems with healthcare.
Ah, you see that's where the Elaros apps come in. People with ME/CFS can be sent home with their consumer app, and the one person (having done module 1 of the ME/CFS training program) who is now armed with the clinic app is equipped to deal with anyone asking for anything more.

The government has hit the ground running on delivering the plan, today writing to health chiefs and local authority chief executives, urging them to team up with local health and care providers, voluntary groups and members of their communities to accelerate the rollout of the services across the country.
Care provided by "voluntary groups" fills me with dread. There are patient charities operating on a shoestring budget and staffed by mostly well-meaning but poorly informed volunteers promoting whatever brand of woo has captured their imagination. There are organisations funded by BPS proponents masquerading as patient charities and clinician associations. The track record of almost all ME/CFS voluntary groups has been awful. And I guess we'll have to include FND and MUS groups now too.
 
Last edited:
There was research that was being talked about on Twitter by Keith Gerraighty in Dec 2024 that was on having centres where it was GPs doing the 'telling us to focus on less' in a 'special local centre' instead of HCPs, that had been in the pipeline being done for time before that.

This is the project page: https://sheffield.ac.uk/ctru/comple... is,“medically unexplained” physical symptoms.

the project itself was published in the lancet late 2024 (link in this page) but I can't get full access to that so having to rely on Keith's tweets.








I'dd clicked through on this specific tweet because it was the first one in the trail that had a link to an actual paper I could access



1753146390319.png

AH here we are, there is a thread on this study, but it didn't get a lot of traffic when it came out - probably because COchrane were disbanding the IAG/review at the time



What this thread doesn't note is that it is 'sponsored' by a CCG (and funded by NIHR, so I don't know what sponsoring means). It is currently in the 'follow up' stage.

The project page: https://sheffield.ac.uk/ctru/completed-trials/mss3#:~:text=Multiple Symptoms Study 3 is,“medically unexplained” physical symptoms.

describes this as:

The Symptoms Clinic​

The Symptoms Clinic is a set of up to four medical appointments designed to help people make sense of persistent physical symptoms (especially if medical tests have been negative) and to reduce the impact of symptoms on daily life. Consultations will take place via video link with a doctor who has had special training for the Symptoms Clinic Intervention.

The consultations include detailed medical history taking, explanation (including discussion of appropriate diagnosis) and advice about management. The Symptoms Clinic involves an initial long consultation of approximately 50 minutes followed up by two or three medium-length consultations of 15-20 minutes.
 
Last edited:
AH here we are, there is a thread on this study, but it didn't get a lot of traffic when it came out - probably because COchrane were disbanding the IAG/review at the time



What this thread doesn't note is that it is 'sponsored' by a CCG (and funded by NIHR, so I don't know what sponsoring means). It is currently in the 'follow up' stage.

The project page: https://sheffield.ac.uk/ctru/completed-trials/mss3#:~:text=Multiple Symptoms Study 3 is,“medically unexplained” physical symptoms.

describes this as:


BUt...
Supplementary material 3 seems to be the description of what this approach is actually - and it will be familiar as a 'greatest hits of misogynising, sorry 'psychologising'' to most?

https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/bmj...mjopen-2022-066511supp003_data_supplement.pdf

Supplementary material 3. The Symptoms Clinic Intervention The Recognition, Explanation, Action and Learning (REAL) intervention was structured as follows. Recognition takes place during the history-taking phase of the intervention. It includes explicit recognition of, and belief in, the reality and legitimacy of the patient’s experience. It also includes explicit recognition that persistent physical symptoms are within the scope of these medical consultations and can be understood without recourse to primary psychological causes. Recognition also seeks to build therapeutic alliance between ER-GP and patient.

Except it is absolutely the Same old 'stuff' with resource to psychological causes, just being even more deceitful and breaching informed consent to deliver this whilst claiming 'it isn't':

Explanation seeks to propose and negotiate explanations for symptoms in terms of body physiology, and sensory signal processing. Explanations seek to portray symptoms as understandable (in contrast to the idea of “medically unexplained symptoms”) adaptive responses in body processes. ER-GPs delivering the Symptoms Clinic are encouraged to use the names of syndromes such as irritable bowel syndrome and fibromyalgia where criteria for these are met. However, explanations aim to provide mechanisms for the symptoms which extend beyond simply attributing a symptom to a syndrome.

I think the whole thing is worthy of a copy-paste so I'd appreciate if a moderator could confirm if the full text of this supplementary material 1 could be pasted as one, given it is a small part of the paper - I think it is important to read it in full, so click on the link if not?

Body-focused actions include breathing techniques (diaphragmatic breathing, slow paced breathing), relaxation, sensory grounding and simple guided imagery20. Actions around thoughts and emotions range include addressing catastrophic or symptom-focused thinking.
 
There are also according to the project page from SHeffield, several papers that link to the results from this:

The full results are published in the Lancet, alongside an editorial and review article.


Burton C, Mooney C, Sutton L, et al. Effectiveness of a symptom-clinic intervention delivered by general practitioners with an extended role for people with multiple and persistent physical symptoms in England: the Multiple Symptoms Study 3 pragmatic, multicentre, parallel-group, individually randomised controlled trial.
Lancet. 2024 Jun 15;403(10444):2619-2629. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(24)00700-1. PMID: 38879261.


The Lancet. Taking persistent physical symptoms seriously.
Lancet. 2024 Jun 15;403(10444):2565. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(24)01242-X. PMID: 38879240.


Löwe B, Toussaint A, Rosmalen JGM, et al. Persistent physical symptoms: definition, genesis, and management.
Lancet. 2024 Jun 15;403(10444):2649-2662. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(24)00623-8. PMID: 38879263.


and I guess these were the 'special issue' given the date is the same and all are in the Lancet.
 
They have not been able to properly staff GP practices for years how are they going to find staff for hundreds of new centres .
It is worth watching a video on this project page:


I'm only a few minutes in and it has already said the symptoms clinic will be run from primary care hubs and will employ GPs for one session a week, giving them additional training for this 'extended role'
 
Transported right back to 2006/2007 where there were team meetings with different people coming together about how to solve the problem of me, nosediving into severe M.E, insisting I colour in paper charts about activities/energy expenditure, spoiler alert there were 2 maybe 3 meetings until it came apparent absolutely nothing discussed was making a difference and an absolute waste of time for all those involved, how long until we disappear even under these ‘teams’ as too complex or face more anger and frustration from ‘well meaning people’ when we destroy whatever targets or measures they decide to use to record improvements, or succumb to compassion fatigue, I guess there is always falsifying and now an app for colouring in instead of old fashioned paper charts, the O.T that occasionally visited me moved on to stroke patients he could actually help years ago, it was a relief, there is nothing pioneering without correct education and research, thoroughly depressed by it all at moment, concerned about how much hope I have riding on decode, on the other hand the cost of having no point of call is too much and my survival so far has been down to pure luck, I realise the importance of having anybody flag other health issues that come along with time and the pressure on our bodys of having an untreated illness for so long, but then they would have to admit its real with disease pathology, ignoring the fact that my M.E is linked to everything and can't be separated is where my GP is currently stuck, same old same old
 
Back
Top Bottom