Otley Town Council

BEHIND
CLOSED
DOORS
Domestic Abuse Charity forced to CLOSE ITS DOORS
Behind Closed Doors is preparing to enter Exit Strategy on 1st December 2009,
with a view to cease operating on 28th February 2010. This will leave West and
North West Leeds without a comprehensive outreach service and recovery
programme for women.
Despite relentless efforts to secure funds to sustain and further develop service
delivery, the current economic climate appears to be taking its toll.
Government efforts to support Third Sector organisations through financial
hardship have been made available to small charities with a relatively low
income or large charities with a much higher income. Behind Closed Doors is a
medium-sized charity and therefore it falls through the net and cannot access
any of this funding.
Safer Leeds has provided Behind Closed Doors with small amounts of funding
from under spend in the past. Whilst this money has bought the organisation time
to secure additional funds in times of crisis and has therefore been invaluable, it
has never been either a regular or guaranteed source of income. There has never
been a continuous commitment to supporting the service and without this it has
been difficult to ensure sustainability for the organisation.
Behind Closed Doors recognises the need for sustainability of the organisation. As
such, Behind Closed Doors is in the process of establishing a social enterprise,
recycling and distributing furniture for the benefit of the wider community. The
profit from this would be gift aided into the Behind Closed Doors Charity to
support service delivery. This would support BCD to be more independent in that
it would be less reliant on trust and public sector funding. A commitment of even
short term funding would support continuation of the service until the trading
arm has been successfully established.
Behind Closed Doors has provided outreach support to 500 women over the past
year and is concerned about the gap in service provision that will be created by
the loss of its service delivery.
We need your support!
Please contact Louise Tyne or Orlaith Mooney on 0845 673 0008
PO Box 275 LS19 9BN
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24 th Otley Victorian Fayre
I take great pleasure in inviting you to the 24th Otley Victorian Fayre which will
be held on Friday the 11th December 2009.
It has been my job, this year, to chair the committee of 8 dedicated people who
work tirelessly to organise an event that has become such an integral part of
Otley’s Christmas celebrations. I would like to officially thank all my fellow
committee members for their commitment and hard work. I am pleased to
report that the recent newspaper articles have been successful and have brought
6 new members into the group.
Last year we were hit by dreadful weather but it did not stop the thousands of
people, young and not so young, who took part in this wonderful event. As in
previous years, during the day, the 2009 Fayre will feature local school children
singing carols at various venues throughout the town. The exact locations can be
found in our programme which will be on sale at a number of outlets in the town.
Many of our shops and businesses will join in with the festivities by dressing
themselves and their windows using a Victorian theme.
This year’s charity will be at the Buttercross throughout the day and evening.
Henshaws is a society for blind people and is based in Harrogate although it
covers the whole of Yorkshire. They run a variety of services offering advice,
support, housing and education to families affected by visual impairment.
The Fayre, which runs from 6 – 9pm will include over 80 stalls offering a variety
of lovely things to buy, win or eat; street entertainment including ,donkey rides,
steam engines, Morris dancers, stilt walkers, a ride on train, traditional fair
ground rides, Santa’s grotto and much more.
Come and join us …. I guarantee you will have a great time !
Steph Lee – Chair Otley Victorian Fayre 2009
Wharfedale Hospital
Missed Appointments
You may recall from
previous articles about
Wharfedale Hospital that
the hospital treats about
11,000 patients every
month. However, a little
published fact related to this is the number of missed
appointments that occur.
These are referred to as DNAs – Did Not Attend. Careful
analysis of these missed appointments is undertaken to try
to ascertain the cause. Obviously it is appreciated that
circumstances arise which prevent a patient from attending
their appointment, however it is very disappointing to note
that many patients do not advise the hospital when this
happens.
• The rate of DNAs at our hospital is about 7% in
outpatient clinics that is approximately 260 patients per
month who fail to attend for their appointment. Just
consider the time associated with the booking of an
appointment, the administration, paperwork and the
nursing and medical staff; there is probably at least 1 1 /2
hours taken up with each appointment. This means over
390 hours of lost clinical time per month. This equates to
10 full time staff.
• Not only this but the appointment slot is then
unavailable for another patient.
• There is also the duplication of all the work associated
with a replacement appointment.
Of more importance to you or me though is that this
resource is denied to other patients who may be desperately
waiting for medical attention.
Sadly there are patients who are “repeat offenders”. These
patients are referred back to their GP’s and in the worst
cases, no further appointments will be made for them until
there has been an explanation of why this keeps happening.
When a notional figure of an average £100 is used to cost
these lost appointments, you can quickly see that in the
case of our hospital, over £312,000 is lost per year from
missed appointments.
Having said this Wharfedale has a better record than other
parts of the Leeds Teaching Hospital Trust but it is still a
problem.
DNAs are always going to occur with any service provider &
it is frustrating when professional teams & other patients
are affected. It is important to identify any particular
cause that can be corrected to relieve the problem. In the
case of Wharfedale the average DNAs have been reasonably
stable at about 6% although recently this has started to
push up to over 7%.
Wharfedale Hospital also experiences about 35
cancellations per month on the day of appointment. This is
not seen to be such a major issue as in most cases it is the
patient’s condition or emergencies that give rise to a
cancellation.
The trend of DNAs at our hospital however is increasing.
Looking at average consolidated figures could mask the very
high incidence that occurs in certain clinics. This situation is
monitored carefully so that any remedial work can be done in
these specific areas to help correct the adverse trend.
So if you can’t make a hospital appointment, please
advise the hospital as early as possible to give the
opportunity for another patient to fill the slot. I am sure
none of us wants to be known as a “persistent offender.”
Laurence Wood/Pat Clark