Record Breaking Response To Making It Better

Date published: 17/05/2006

The people of Greater Manchester and surrounding areas have responded in their thousands to the Children’s Maternity and Neonatal services consultation that has now formally ended.

The Making it Better consultation ran for 17 weeks from 12 January and closed on Friday with a record breaking and overwhelming response. Over 55,000 formal written responses have been received together with 15,000 responses at public meetings and over 125,000 signatures on a number of petitions making it the largest ever response to an health consultation anywhere in the United Kingdom.

The consultation, a statutory requirement in accordance with sections 7 and 11 of the Health and Social Care Act, including a massive involvement and engagement phase involving Citizens’ Councils and thousands of individuals and the distribution of over 400,000 booklets and leaflets has so far cost £850,000.

Every single response is now to be analysed by an independent organisation to produce an outline report for consideration by the Overview and Scrutiny Committee and the Joint Committee of Primary Care Trusts. An outcome is not expected before September 2006 at the earliest.

Leila Williams, Director of the Children’s Network, said “We are surprised but absolutely delighted at the response. It clearly shows the huge importance attached to this area of healthcare and thank everyone for their contribution. It means that everyone has really had their say and made it an effective consultation.”

John Williams, SHA Project Director for Consultations, said “This signals the end of a highly successful consultation phase. The process now focuses on the analysis of response and the ultimate decision making to be undertaken by the Joint Committee. This will be no easy task and will take some time.”