This week's letters page

We can appreciate the difficulties in determining what is a minor illness and minor injury in children and have tried to make this as straightforward as possible in our communications to parents and the wider public.

We aim to ensure that a child is brought to the healthcare facility that is best able to deal with their condition.

This ensures that they receive appropriate healthcare as quickly as is required and also minimises the need for a transfer to another location.

We have used examples of minor injury and minor illness to help parents and carers make the decision about where they should take a child.

Minor illness includes children with a short vomiting illness or a high temperature. Minor injuries on the other hand include sprains, cuts and fractures of hands and feet.

Children with an illness will be seen by their GP or via the GP out of hours service – contactable by calling NHS 24 on 111.

Seriously ill children must be taken to the nearest A&E department, either at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley or the Royal Hospital for Children on the Queen Elizabeth Campus in Glasgow.

In the event of a parent or carer being unsure where the best place to take an ill or injured child to, NHS 24 is available to patients 24 hours a day to provide assistance and advice in deciding where is the best place to take an ill or injured child.

Dr Alasdair Corfield, Clinical Director of Emergency Medicine (Clyde). via email.

THE Joint Trade Unions at West Dunbartonshire Council, UNITE, UNISON, GMB, EIS, and Clydebank TUC are organising hustings for the forthcoming local elections.

With local government suffering from budget cuts for many years with the resultant loss of tens of thousands of jobs and cuts in services in Scotland the unions believe we need councillors who are prepared work with the unions and fight for their communities.

In addition local democracy has been under attack with the centralising of services.

A major issue currently facing local council workers is the situation in the care homes where staff face a significant downgrading with a severe cut in their wages.

The trade unions believe that staff who are not offered a suitable alternative post at their grade are facing compulsory redundancy.

If they opt for protection under the Council's SWITCH policy they will have been deemed to have accepted an alternative.

If they they apply for pension figures they will be put through a Cost Benefit Analysis and if the figures do not stack up they will not get retirement and be directed towards the SWITCH policy.

The Unions are asking, if staff don't accept the SWITCH protection what will the Council do? ie workers refuse to accept a lower grade with limited protection.

Will the Cost Benefit Analysis be put aside and staff who want to retire be allowed to?

The feedback to staff is that many clients and carers are very concerned with this unrest among the workforce and what this means for care in the new homes.

These hustings will allow staff and carers the opportunity to question candidates on this vital issues and many others such as the closure of Social Work premises.

All the political parties have been invited to the hustings which will take place at;

Clydebank Lesser Town Hall, Tuesday 18.04.2017@7pm, Concorde Community Centre, Wednesday 19.04.2017@7pm.

Tom Morrison, on behalf of

UNITE, UNISON, GMB, EIS, and Clydebank Trades Union Council

WHAT does “We, the Scottish people, are sovereign,” actually mean?

Per head of population, five million approximately, that means each person in Scotland gets a one single part in five million parts share in the sovereign wealth and power of Scotland. That is the good news.

However, under SNP/Independence and Labour/Unionist plans, Scotland inherits the pre-existing laws of land, labour and capital.

That means the wealth and power will not be distributed equally or uniformly, per head of population. It will be divided by class and the ruling class will get the lions share.

So, the majority working class will get a fraction of one single part in five million parts share in the sovereign wealth and power of Scotland. Birdseed for the plebs.

Have you noticed how the business economics’ statistics for Scotland produced by the Government/think tanks never ask , “Who gets the wealth?”

They don’t have to ask because they already know. The ruling class.

The Community Party’s response to this injustice is crystal clear.

Starting with West Dunbartonshire Council the Community Party will pursue a top priority course of openness, transparency, accountability and democracy, viz.

Who gets what, where, when, how and why? Public money for public services.

Vote for the Community Party in the West Dunbartonshire Council Elections in May.

James Graham, member of the Community Party

I HAVE just received a response from Mr Robert Calderwood, Chief Executive of NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde to my letter to him regarding the disgraceful breakdown of the GP Out of Hours service at Vale of Leven Hospital.

Mr Calderwood recognised that there are, “a number of challenges with the service.” I think we would all agree with that. What he was not able to do was provide any assurance that things would improve.

Indeed, from his letter I became confused over the meaning of the word ‘responsible.’

I had always thought that responsible was similar to accountable, answerable, in charge, in control, in authority.

The Chief Executive states, “The Board, through our Acute Division, is operationally responsible for the delivery of the service.” That to me is clear so they should take responsibility and improve the service.

Apparently not so, as he explains, “but the legislation which established Integrated Joint Boards (IJBs) gave them responsibility for planning and financing Out of Hours services.”

So are we talking patient care or politics? Is it the SNP NHS up against the Labour dominated Integrated Joint Boards with neither taking responsibility?

In typical political fashion, “a review of the service” will be established.

Clearly and very sadly this is yet another example of nobody taking responsibility for the health of local people.

Mr. Calderwood’s advice, “patients should always call NHS 24.”

One more nail in the coffin of the Vale of Leven Hospital and in people’s health.

George Drummond, Scottish Lib Dem Candidate, Leven Ward, West Dunbartonshire

IN January 2015, I collapsed at school. I’d had a stroke. I was 14 years old.

I was left with a brain injury and could no longer move my right side, talk or walk.

After time in hospital, I moved to The Children’s Trust, a specialist rehabilitation centre in Surrey, where I relearned some of the skills I had lost through intensive therapy.

It took a lot of willpower. I had to be brave and work hard. My biggest achievement was learning to walk again.

I’m sharing my story because the charity that helped me, The Children’s Trust, is asking us all to go outside of our comfort zone and help raise money for children with brain injury.

Every year more than 40,000 children are left with a brain injury as a result of an accident or illness.

As I have found, specialist rehabilitation is their best chance of recovery. But it’s not possible without your help.

#MyBrave was learning to walk again for the second time in my life. What’s yours? Visit www.mybrave.co.uk for inspiration. Thank you.

Harrison, via e-mail.

TODAY (March 28) the democratically elected Scottish parliament will vote to hold an independence referendum, however, the unelected PM at Westminster has said she will block Scotland's democratic right to vote on its constitutional future.

The SNP government, along with the Greens, are only sticking to their manifesto pledge: That being, they would hold a 2nd referendum if there was a material change, such as Scotland getting dragged out of Europe against its will.

This is a position I like most who voted SNP or Greens, understood and support.

Now we are being told it does not matter what the democratic wishes of the Scottish people are, we have to toe the line and be dictated to by a government that has only one elected MP in Scotland.

Let's not forget that 62% of Scots voted to remain in the European Union, all 32 local authority areas had a majority to remain, including, ironically enough, the one represented by the only Tory MP north of the border, who, incidentally, also campaigned for and voted to remain.

In fact, every one of Scotland's 59 MPs supported remaining in the EU.

So there you have it folks, despite the vast majority voting to remain, our parliament voting to remain, our MPs supporting remain, our local authorities supporting remain, unelected Theresa May is going to attempt to block our democratic right to decide our own future.

I seem to remember the phrase "A union of equals" being banded about during the last independence campaign, I don't think, by any stretch of the imagination, that anyone could view the disgraceful fashion in which Scotland's democratic wishes are being completely ignored, as being somehow equal treatment, the facts suggest the opposite.

Indeed, the undemocratic way in which Westminster is riding roughshod over the Scottish people's wishes is more akin to that of how a colonial power treats its colonies, than that of the relationship between two nations in a voluntary union.

Don't Get Angry, Get Organised!

Charlie Sherry, Bowling, West Dunbartonshire.

IT is little wonder that the Vale of Leven Hospital is struggling to find staff to keep services running.

Every week, for as long as I can remember, Jackie Baillie MSP and James Moohan have told us the hospital is hanging by a thread, and will close at any moment.

What right-minded person would consider moving to a job if there was any murmur that their new workplace was threatened with closure?

There is a phrase that describes what Baillie and Moohan have created here - the self-fulfilling prophecy. Their negativity may well have doomed the Vale to closure.

Cynically, however, Jackie Baillie has positioned herself to capitalise from the VoL situation whatever the outcome. If it stays open, she'll claim to have single-handedly saved it. If it closes, she'll be able to say "I told you so". What an awful game to play with patients' lives.

Cathy Bell, Dumbarton