Willow Tree Family Doctors News Blog

  A Time Bank for Kingsbury? Timebanking is a system of trading units of your time – a means of exchange to allow people to help each other and to receive help. For example I may need my hedge cutting. I can ask a member of the Time Bank to do this for me. I don’t pay any money. Joe cuts my hedge- it takes him 1 hour, so he is credited with one hour of Time. I have been debited an hour of my time. I can teach computing skills so I might earn that hour back by showing my neighbour Edith how to get on line. Joe meanwhile can use his hour earned from cutting my hedge to have an hour’s help decorating his kitchen. And so on. Your time is equivalent to another person's time. Hedge cutting is simply equivalent to teaching computer skills in units of time. There is no monetary cost per hour. By receiving and giving   in this way, people come into contact with each other, make new friends and become involved in the community - ideal if you’re feeling lonely or disenf...

A summary of the NHS changes From April 1 st , the NHS has changed fundamentally, the biggest changes since its inception, as laid out in the highly contentious Health & Social Care Bill of 2012 which created a huge storm and required many changes before it could pass through parliament. Though some changes were made it still means massive and rapid upheaval and an uncertain future for the NHS at a time when budgets are having to be significantly cut and demand is rising inexorably whilst the costs increase. A perfect storm, say some. So what exactly happened in April? Here is a good video from the Kings Fund which makes some kind of sense of it all - possibly.  The organisational structure of the NHS has changed. This is meant to make it more responsive to local needs. GPs, through local Commissioning Groups , will now be responsible for commissioning healthcare for their patients (see our blog on commissioning). It used to be the job of Primary Ca...