Beveavement Service Bereft!

In the end I was very impressed with the way the Health Scrutiny Committee handled the issue of the end of Sutton Beareavement Service, which recently lost its contact with the PCT and closes in March 2007. It looks to me that the national dirver for the change is worki being done to tackle the high levels of incapacity benefit caused by depression by significantly increasing the spending on "talking therapies" like CBT. The expansion is in principle a good thing and part of a wider "happiness" agenda (see Richard Layard's eponymous book on the subject), however the Bereavement Services has become a victim of this change.

It would have been hard for Sutton Council to take an outraged moral high-ground on this issue, after all it was Sutton Council that ceased funding the Bereavement Service in 2000 and expected the PCT to totally pay for them after that date.

I was pleased to see that Paul Burstow MP acted as a facilitator for the debate on their future in September, after all he was a member of a Liberal Democrat Group the withdrew their funding in the first place in 2000, so I assume he was making up for his earlier error.

In the end the Health Scrutiny Committee eschewed hypocrisy on the issue and sensibly asked Ruth Dombey to broker a deal whereby at least some aspects of the service are likely to survice in the new service.

Personally if I had been in charge I would have argued a few months ago for a Council budget growth item to retain a separate service in Sutton, which would be in line with what I did when I opposed the original Coouncil cut to their budget in 2000.