TO PRINT A COPY OF OUR SAVE ST HELIER PETITION PLEASE CLICK HERE.
The local NHS in South West London has been told to find £370m savings a year, and as a result St Helier Hospital is under threat. Siobhain is leading a community campaign to save the hospital's A&E, Maternity and other services.
My latest briefing note about the campaign is
here - including a letter that you might like to send to your local GP to ask them to back the campaign. If you want other key facts about St Helier, you can also read
here.
Other than joining the campaign by signing up below, here are the top 5 things you can do to help make a difference:
1 Contact your GP. GPs are very powerful in the NHS now. They control the NHS through Clinical Commissioning Groups. So tell your GP you are against any cuts at St Helier and ask them whether they are against closing St Helier’s A&E and Maternity Unit. If you want ideas for what to say, my briefing note includes a suggested letter on page 5. Click here to see it. When your GP replies, please send a copy to
savesthelier@mmlp.org.uk.
2 Write to the Secretary of State for Health. Tell him what you think and why you want to keep St Helier open. I'm campaigning for a moratorium on all A&E closures, but it is up to Ministers to decide. You can write to the Health Secretary from this website:
www.dh.gov.uk/health/contact-dh or by letter to Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP, Secretary of State for Health, Richmond House, 79 Whitehall, London SW1A 2NS.
3 Take copies of the Save St Helier petition, and tell your friends, family and neighbours about the plans. Ask them to sign the petition, write to their MP and do all the things you are doing to Save St Helier. You can also ask your local newsagent, hairdresser, etc if they will put a petition on display for their customers to sign too.
4 Write to your local paper. You can write to the Wimbledon and Mitcham and Morden Guardian at
letters@wimbledonguardian.co.uk. You can also join the facebook group “Save St Helier Maternity and A+E” and follow #savesthelier on Twitter.
5 Volunteer to deliver Save St Helier leaflets. Call my office on 020 8542 4835 or email
savesthelier@mmlp.org.uk if you are able to spend an hour leafleting the area where you live.
And finally
Make sure we have your contact details. It will help us to organise future events if we have your details – mobile numbers and email addresses are especially useful. Email your details to
savesthelier@mmlp.org.uk - and you can also register your support for the Save St Helier campaign by signing up to the campaign here!
URGENT UPDATE
I've contacted local GPs after I was shown minutes of a meeting of all GP Practices in Merton which suggested they had all voted in favour of allowing plans to remove services from St Helier to go to the next stage. You can read my letter here.
Several GPs have replied, with exactly the same reply. You can read the standard reply here.