STARS alight!

Thames Valley Initiative, being one of the bigger projects, has split into several different since its origins in 2004; some by design and others by the inevitable processes of NHS changes like Foundation Trusts. The 'TVI' team was formed as the 'umbrella' to integrate and coordinate the clinical services across the region - mainly now through service user partnership.

Meeting in Aylesbury was therefore somewhat artificial - as the team covers the terrain between the far-flung corners of the Berkshire Downs with the horsey lands near Lambourne, Royal Windsor and its less leafy suburb of Slough, the concrete cows of modern Milton Keynes and the sleepy Cotswold villages of rural Oxfordshire.


But one of the first things we noticed - as often - was the warm welcome. About 28C by the feel of it. Many of us are used to NHS hospitals where the blazing heat of the radiators comes on in October and goes off in March, come what may - but the system seems even more perverse in Aylesbury, where - if we heard it right - this was in reverse. And, having the usual level of environmental and practical control that NHS employees enjoy, we were confidently assured that there was nothing  that could be done about it. Perhaps a sort of symbolism for the limits to empowerment? Or a challenge for those who are sufficiently determined?


But  the insufficiency of the partially-openable mental health windows to counter the intense blasts of radiant energy emanating from the self-empowered and autonomously functioning radiators was a fact we could not ignore for long. The levels of oxygen felt disablingly low, and fresh air breaks were called for. For some, of course, this is a paradoxical injunction and the 'fresh air' required is charged with mixed carcinogens, particulates and tar - but only allowed if undertaken beyond the boundary, in the public road. But sometimes, the best conversations happen in "smokers' corner"...

 

(Stars logo, and other pics, awaited...)