World Mental Health Day is on Tuesday, 12th October and we have events in Reading on that day and on Thursday 12th and Friday 13th. On Tuesday, 10th October, Berkshire Healthcare Psychological Medicine Service, which provides a mental health liaison service in the Royal Berkshire Hospital's A&E Department, will be present near the main entrance of the hospital to describe their work and discuss mental health services. Additionally, on Tuesday, 10th October, Reading's Compass Recovery College will be presented in Central Library and Oxford Road Library - just drop in on the day.

South Reading Patient Voice will be meeting at 6pm on Wednesday, 27th September at 94, London Street, Reading RG14SJ - Reading Community Learning Centre. We will hear a talk from David Cooper - until recently Lead Governor at the Royal Berkshire Hospital Trust. We will also discuss our response to the proposal to merge Berkshire West CCGs and create an Accountable Care System, news from local Patient Participation Groups and the local health economy.

The Government has backed out of selling the NHS's internal staff agency - NHS Professionals after much opposition and demands for an enquiry. NHS Professionals is the NHS's internal staff agency. As the NHS is currently in the middle of waging a campaign against the use of external agency staff (needed because we have neither trained enough staff nor kept up pay sufficiently to retain them) NHS Professionals has suddenly become much more active and much more important to the NHS. It is used for staff to earn more in extra hours or to work on supply.

The new 111 NHS telephone service, starting on 5th September 2017 in Berkshire West and other parts of the Thames Valley has is designed as an Integrated Urgent Care service. It is more closely integrated with the out-of-hours GP service. It is anticipated that about 30% of calls will be handled by a clinician.

For 2016-17 NHS spending was 145 billion which is 6.5% of GDP of about 2.2 trillion. Private health spending is thought to be a little above 1% of GDP or about 26 billion, giving total health expenditure of 7.5 - 8% of GDP, but adding in social care for international comparison, total health expenditure by international definition is about 9.9% of GDP. For comparison Germany, France, Sweden and Japan spend about 11% of (a larger per capita) GDP.