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NHS Grampian submits financial recovery plan to ministers

NHS Grampian submits financial recovery plan to ministers

BBC News20 hours ago

NHS Grampian has submitted a recovery plan to the Scottish government in a bid to ease its financial crisis.The health board said in April a plan was needed to reduce a £45m deficit forecast for next year.Since then, NHS Grampian has been escalated to stage four out of five on NHS Scotland's National Performance Framework. The stage warns of "significant risks" to a health board's delivery, quality, financial performance or safety.
The Scottish government has loaned NHS Grampian £90m over the last two years.The health board has confirmed it had provided documentation and continued to liaise with the Scottish government.In a statement to the Scottish Parliament last week, Health Secretary Neil Gray said NHS Grampian's deficit for the 2024-25 financial year was about £65m.He said was the largest of any health board over that time period.Accounting firm KPMG has started what is called a "whole system diagnostic" to help inform a package of support for NHS Grampian.It is due to finish that work by the end of this month.The Scottish government said it continued to support NHS Grampian's board to develop a financial recovery plan in line with the timeframe agreed.

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Swapped at birth: Why dad never looked like his parents
Swapped at birth: Why dad never looked like his parents

BBC News

time44 minutes ago

  • BBC News

Swapped at birth: Why dad never looked like his parents

Matthew's dad had brown eyes and black hair. His grandparents had piercing blue was a running joke in his family that "dad looked nothing like his parents", the teacher from southern England turned out there was a very good reason for father had been swapped at birth in hospital nearly 80 years ago. He died late last year before learning the truth of his family - not his real name - contacted the BBC after we reported on the case of Susan, who received compensation from an NHS trust after a home DNA test revealed she had been accidentally switched for another baby in the News is now aware of five cases of babies swapped by mistake in maternity wards from the late 1940s to the say they expect more people to come forward driven by the increase in cheap genetic testing. 'The old joke might be true after all' During the pandemic, Matthew started looking for answers to niggling questions about his family history. He sent off a saliva sample in the post to be genealogy company entered his record into its vast online database, allowing him to view other users whose DNA closely matched his own."Half of the names I'd just never heard of," he says. "I thought, 'That's weird', and called my wife to tell her the old family joke might be true after all."Matthew then asked his dad to submit his own DNA sample, which confirmed he was even more closely related to the same group of mysterious family started exchanging messages with two women who the site suggested were his father's cousins. All were confused about how they could possibly be together, they eventually tracked down birth records from 1946, months after the end of World War documents showed that one day after his father was apparently born, another baby boy had been registered at the same hospital in east boy had the same relatively unusual surname that appeared on the mystery branch of the family tree, a link later confirmed by birth certificates obtained by was a lightbulb moment."I realised straight away what must have happened," he says. "The only explanation that made sense was that both babies got muddled up in hospital."Matthew and the two women managed to construct a brand new family tree based on all of his DNA matches."I love a puzzle and I love understanding the past," he says. "I'm quite obsessive anyway, so I got into trying to reverse engineer what had happened." An era before wristbands Before World War Two, most babies in the UK were born at home, or in nursing homes, attended by midwives and the family started to change as the country prepared for the launch of the NHS in 1948, and very gradually, more babies were delivered in hospital, where newborns were typically removed for periods to be cared for in nurseries."The baby would be taken away between feeds so that the mother could rest, and the baby could be watched by either a nursery nurse or midwife," says Terri Coates, a retired lecturer in midwifery, and former clinical adviser on BBC series Call The Midwife."It may sound paternalistic, but midwives believed they were looking after mums and babies incredibly well."It was common for new mothers to be kept in hospital for between five and seven days, far longer than identify newborns in the nursery, a card would be tied to the end of the cot with the baby's name, mother's name, the date and time of birth, and the baby's weight."Where cots rather than babies were labelled, accidents could easily happen", says Ms Coates, who trained as a nurse herself in the 1970s and a midwife in 1981."If there were two or more members of staff in the nursery feeding babies, for example, a baby could easily be put down in the wrong cot."By 1956, hospital births were becoming more common, and midwifery textbooks were recommending that a "wrist name-tape" or "string of lettered china beads" should be attached directly to the newborn.A decade later, by the mid-1960s, it was rare for babies to be removed from the delivery room without being individually labelled. Stories of babies being accidentally switched in hospital were very rare at the time, though more are now coming to light thanks to the boom in genetic testing and ancestry day after Jan Daly was born at a hospital in north London in 1951, her mother immediately complained that the baby she had been given was not hers."She was really stressed and crying, but the nurses assured her she was wrong and the doctor was called in to try to calm her," Jan staff only backed down when her mum told them she'd had a fast, unassisted delivery, and pointed out the clear forceps marks on the baby's head"I feel for the other mother who had been happily feeding me for two days and then had to give up one baby for another," she says."There was never any apology, it was just 'one of those silly errors', but the trauma affected my mother for a long time." Never finding out Matthew's father, an insurance agent from the Home Counties, was a keen amateur cyclist who spent his life following the local racing lived alone in retirement and over the last decade his health had been deteriorating. Matthew thought long and hard about telling him the truth about his family history but, in the end, decided against it. "I just felt my dad doesn't need this," he says. "He had lived 78 years in a type of ignorance, so it didn't feel right to share it with him."Matthew's father died last year without ever knowing he'd been celebrating his birthday a day early for the past eight then, Matthew has driven to the West Country to meet his dad's genetic first cousin and her daughter for all got on well, he says, sharing old photos and "filling in missing bits of family history".But Matthew has decided not to contact the man his father must have been swapped with as a baby, or his children – in part because they have not taken DNA tests themselves."If you do a test by sending your saliva off, then there's an implicit understanding that you might find something that's a bit of a surprise," Matthew says."Whereas with people who haven't, I'm still not sure if it's the right thing to reach out to them - I just don't think it's right to drop that bombshell."

Pensioner care system at risk of 'breaking down completely'
Pensioner care system at risk of 'breaking down completely'

The Herald Scotland

timean hour ago

  • The Herald Scotland

Pensioner care system at risk of 'breaking down completely'

It comes as statistics published this week showed a majority of elderly Scots who took part in a national survey reported unmet needs in social care, with the disabled, poor and those cared for by relatives, most at risk. A total of 48,876 adults aged 65 and over responded to the Scottish Government's health and care experience survey for 2023-24. More than 10,000 said they needed some kind of care, support and help with everyday living. Analysis of the survey revealed that 22% of pensioners reported that they needed or received support over the past 12 months, while 9% of adults reported unmet needs. Of those who said they needed or received support, 43% flagged unmet support needs. The scale of unmet needs soared for disabled adults - 17% compared to 2% of those without a disability. Read more: The survey also revealed the stark issues facing disabled pensioners, with 35% warning they did not receive help that met their needs. Meanwhile, those receiving unfunded support - family care - were more likely to report an unmet need - 42%, compared to 32% receiving state-funded support. Older adults living in the most deprived quintile (SIMD1) were more likely to report experiencing an unmet need (16%), compared with 6% of their more affluent peers. Adam Stachura, director of policy at Age Scotland, told The Herald: 'The result of this survey go to the heart of some of the worst failings in the care system. 'An alarming number of over-65s with care requirements are unable to get any of the support they need and many more are struggling to get by with too little care. 'The effect on older people of not getting the care they need can be catastrophic. Many older respondents, and especially those with disabilities, reported being limited in what daily activities they could do. "Lack of support can also prevent older people maintaining connections among friends, family and in their communities, fuelling the loneliness epidemic affecting older people. 'Interestingly, the survey shows that those who needed support but did not receive any includes older people in both rural and urban settings across the country, which highlights that the shortcomings are a national problem in need of urgent reform. Read more: 'We have called before for the Scottish Government to work with local authorities to fix the social care system. Figures like these should act as a reminder that inaction, and the continued failure to invest and reform, will in effect allow the care system to break down completely, causing untold misery for hundreds of thousands of older people.' The Scottish Government has accepted that the social care system needs "fundamental reform," but said the Care Reform (Scotland) Bill, if passed in Holyrood, would achieve this aim. The plans to reform care services costs the Scottish Government around £1 million per month despite dropping plans to set up a national care service. The Bill proposes a raft of changes to care services, including improving the rights of care home residents to visits. A Scottish Government spokesman said: 'The health and social care system in Scotland needs fundamental reform and this report supports that. 'We are taking key steps towards delivering that through the Care Reform (Scotland) Bill. If passed by Parliament, it will help improve people's lives and quality of care, while ensuring those who deliver vital services feel supported. 'The UK Government must also play its part in helping us deliver sustainable change by reversing increases to Employment National Insurance Contributions (ENICs) and their plans to end international recruitment – both of which will be devastating for the care sector.'

EXCLUSIVE EXPOSED: How restaurants are lying to you about their hygiene ratings. STEVE BOGGAN'S investigation reveals the shocking truth about those green stickers - and exactly what the owners had to say when confronted
EXCLUSIVE EXPOSED: How restaurants are lying to you about their hygiene ratings. STEVE BOGGAN'S investigation reveals the shocking truth about those green stickers - and exactly what the owners had to say when confronted

Daily Mail​

time5 hours ago

  • Daily Mail​

EXCLUSIVE EXPOSED: How restaurants are lying to you about their hygiene ratings. STEVE BOGGAN'S investigation reveals the shocking truth about those green stickers - and exactly what the owners had to say when confronted

Are you from food hygiene? It was an odd question to be asked, but 46-year-old restaurateur Sameh Houeidi seemed anxious to know. I was looking at the official hygiene rating sticker on the window of his Lebanese restaurant near Aldgate in London.

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