STROKE services in the community are still subject to a postcode lottery, says Joyce Watson AM
Joyce has been campaigning to make sure all areas within her mid and west Wales constituency have access to two core services run by the Stroke Association.
Last year, only Carmarthenshire Local Health Board was commissioning these services (Communication Support plus Family and Carer Support). Pembrokeshire had just the Communication Support. Powys and Ceredigion had neither service.
Joyce sent letters to all the health boards concerned and raised the issue in the National Assembly. Since then, Powys Local Health Board has agreed to fund the Family and Carer Support from this year. Joyce also hoped that Pembrokeshire would commission the Family and Carer Support. But the local authority invited the Stroke Association to bid for a maximum of £5,000 whereas whereas it costs at least £30,000 a year to run the service.
Joyce is to raise this issue with the local health board again. She has also written to Powys and Ceredigion health boards again urging them to commission both services.
The Assembly Member, who has visited Carmarthenshire's Communication Support group, has also been assured by health minister Edwina Hart that the new NHS structure in Wales coming in this year will be able to address inconsistencies and variation in services. Wales's current system of local health boards and hospital trusts will be reorganised into seven local health boards from October.
Joyce said: "I hope that reorganisation will eradicate inequalities but I want these health boards to fund these services now. People are having strokes in Wales every day and we shouldn't have to wait until October and beyond for these problems to be ironed out."
Trish Hughes, deputy director of Stroke Association Cymru, said: "Stroke is a family illness; it is not just the person who has had a stroke who has to come to terms with living with a disability , carers and families are hugely affected too. The Stroke Association services are invaluable in supporting people after a stroke. It is a great shame that a great many families are disadvantaged because these services in the community are subject to a postcode lottery."
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