Bedford residents need help to understand NHS winter health campaign claims councillor

Bedford residents need help to understand the NHS’ winter health campaign claims a councillor.

Leaflet drops and a social media campaign are planned to help make sure it is easy for every Bedford borough resident to understand the NHS winter health campaign.

But one councillor expressed concerns the campaign would not reach everybody – and whether the leaflets would be “any good”.

The council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee was given an update on Monday (October 10) on the Bedfordshire Luton and Milton Keynes Integrated Care Board’s (BLMK ICB) activities to support its winter plan.

The committee was told that the plan includes door drops of the ‘Help Us Help You’ leaflet, different language and easy-read versions of the leaflet, and a paid-for targeted social media campaign.

Michelle Summers, associate director of Commons and engagement at BLMK ICB, said: “We want to try and make it as clear as possible to people of how they can access help and advice this winter,” she said.

Councillor Kay Burley (Labour, Kempston Central & East) said she was concerned about how BLMK ICB was going to reach everybody.

“I think if you’re bright and you’re digitally brilliant and you know exactly what to do, and you know which website to go to and how to get the information, you’ll have no problems.

“But there are a lot of people in our community that can’t do any of those things.”

Councillor Burley said she is visually impaired and can’t read leaflets unless they are “printed properly”.

“If you do grey writing on white and blue, you use a lot of blue in the NHS, it’s dreadful.

“It’s absolutely dreadful for people to read, and they’re going to give up after the first sentence.

“So it doesn’t matter how much content you put in [the leaflet] if they can’t read it and then it’s no good,” she said.

Councillor Burley also pointed out that not everyone knows what the acronyms stand for.

“If you’re a lay person and you’re in your 80s, and you’re sick, and there’s all these acronyms everywhere, you don’t know what the hell it’s about and you’re not going to read it,” she said.

“There are lots of necessities about communication because if it doesn’t work then it’s absolutely useless and whatever money there is being used is just a waste of money.

“But I wish you luck, and I’m waiting for my leaflet. And I’ll see if it’s any good,” she said.

The NHS set out steps to rapidly boost capacity and resilience in August. That includes increasing bed availability and staff numbers, ahead of the busy winter period.

Health chiefs also outlined plans to prepare local services for additional pressure, by creating the equivalent of 7,000 more beds through a mixture of new hospital beds, ‘virtual ward’ spaces and initiatives to improve patient flow over the coming months.

The NHS said it will also recruit more call handlers across the country so that we have at least 4,800 staff working in 111 and 2,500 in 999 call rooms to deal with higher demand.