The Public Petitions Committee met again on Tuesday 13th January 2009 in the Parliament Building to consider the responses they had received from organisations they had invited to submit comments, and also the BrainIAC response to these. Two Constituency MSPs of two of our members, Paul Martin and David Whitton, had agreed to appear before the Committee to support the BrainIAC Petition.
There was much discussion which centred around the strong written support given to the Petition by non-statutory/voluntary organisations (Headway, Scottish Head Injury Forum, Princess Trust for Carers) in comparison with the statutory bodies (Scottish Government, NHS-Quality Improvement Scotland) who do not support the introduction of a separate and distinct health and community care client group category of ABI , as proposed in our Petition, and have no plans to introduce it.
One member of the Committee noted that “if this is the position [of the Government] at the moment, collectively we are challenging the Government to say why such a group is not needed. The evidence appears to point in another direction. We should ask the Government to explain its position in the context of the large number of pieces of paper that we have received [supporting the petition].”
So the Committee agreed to write to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing asking her to say why such a new health and care grouping is not needed while the evidence appears to point in another direction. When the Government was asked to explain its position in the context of the large number of pieces of paper that they have received – this resulted in the reply letter of 5th February from the Minister (PE1179/H Scottish Government letter of 5 February 2009 (364KB pdf)
BrainIAC has the opportunity to respond to this letter, and a draft has been developed by several members – this is to be discussed at the next BrainIAC Meeting on:
Friday 13th March 2009
1.30pm Glasgow Headway (Renfield Centre, 260 Bath Street, Glasgow)
Hopefully as many members as possible will attend.
Then the Public Petitions Committee will meet again on Tues 31st March to discuss both these letters and our Petition further.
Alan Agar (Secretary) 6th March 2009
