HAVING set out its proposals for improving care in Devon in a document entitled ‘Your Future Care’, the NHS in Northern, Eastern and Western Devon (NEW Devon) is hosting a number of public consultation events across the county, where the public can learn more, speak to the programme’s clinical leaders and let them know what they think, writes Christine Williams.

One such meeting is to be held in Holsworthy’s Memorial Hall between 9.30am and 11.30am on Thursday, December 22.

Sarah Hyde, the CCG’s media and communications officer told the Post that the roadshow is to give people in a wider area the chance to find out what is happening in the Eastern part of the CCG area and to learn about the way they plan to care for the elderly and frail by providing more care at home and in the community.

Holsworthy hospital is not part of the ‘Your Future Care’ consultation, which is why a formal consultation event is not being held in the town.

Nevertheless, local residents are urged to attend as, in due course, the model of community services based on the principles of integrating care, personalising support, ‘think carer think family’ and ‘home as the first choice’ is likely to be rolled out across the NEW Devon area.

Those who attended the CCG consultation meetings in a packed Memorial Hall in 2014 will no doubt recognise these intentions as a reinvention of the ‘Care Closer to Home’ policy, which led to the closure of beds at Torrington Hospital and seemed, at the time, to threaten the beds at Holsworthy Hospital.