Last month, Save South Tyneside Hospital Campaign (SSTHC), came in for some criticism on social media for demonstrating against the loss of maternity services at our only hospital. The main argument was that South Tyneside Hospital (STH) was attracting new, state of the art services including a new Endoscopy and an Intensive Care Unit, a new outpatient pharmacy and a £10m Integrated Diagnostic Centre.
Whilst these are undoubtedly fantastic additions to the hospital, they come with significant caveats.
Firstly, they come at the loss of Stroke Services and full Maternity Services including the Special Care Baby Unit relocated Sunderland Royal Hospital (SRH) and the downgrading of Children’s A&E from a 24/7 service to a 9am-9pm facility. In addition, Phase 2 of the Path To Excellence would see emergency surgery moved entirely to SRH with STH simply being used for planned procedures.
Secondly, this new diagnostic centre is not NHS. It’s run in partnership with Alliance Medical, part of the private Life Healthcare Group previously owned by private equity firm Dubai International Capital. This means that government (ie. taxpayer) money is taken out of the public healthcare system and redirected to a private healthcare provider and their shareholders.
Thirdly, you have the loss of maternity services – and it’s this aspect which could potentially have a wider impact on public service provision. With the midwife-led maternity unit at STH currently closed, expectant parents are forced to go to a hospital outside the borough. Light-heartedly, this means choosing whether to have a Mackem or a Geordie baby however it can have more serious implications for future school place provision.
On a national level, the National Pupil Projection document uses official Office of National Statistics (ONS) population estimations, birth registrations in England and data from the School Census to create national projections for the number of pupils in England. On a local level, effective school place forecasting, both mainstream and specialist, is essential to ensure the numbers of children requiring school places are catered for. In mainstream school forecasting birth data underpins all forecasts - birth data is collected by the ONS by electoral ward. Now, just consider how many children will be born in South Tyneside without any maternity services…
Children living in South Tyneside will be born in Sunderland or Gateshead or Newcastle. So, what impact will that have on our school place provision?
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