In March, as Coronavirus hit the nation, health services across the country were forced to adapt their ways of working to ensure patients, the public and staff were safe and not at risk of catching or spreading the virus.

 

A few weeks into that new world, back in April, I was on the front page of this paper, surrounded by photos of my NHS and care colleagues. They were all holding thank-you signs. We were saying thank you to the people of Barnsley for following the guidelines and protecting the NHS and, in turn, you and your loved ones.

 

I said then, that we would only get through this if we did it together and if we looked out for each other. We knew then that things weren’t going to be normal and that we would all need to adapt.

 

Six months on, and heading into winter, we have come such a long way in Barnsley and our health and care services have responded to this crisis in a way that we should all be very proud of.

 

You’ll know though, that nothing about these times feels normal, does it? We need to be honest and be clear that your experience of health services will continue to be different. We are still very much in a pandemic. We need to keep working differently.

 

By your GP practices working differently, it means that we can keep more people safe. Appointments over the phone, or via a video call, are one of the most obvious changes you’ll have seen.

 

There are lots of people who find these appointments far more convenient but, it’s not for everyone. Your GP will make a clinical assessment and ask you to come in to see them if it’s right for you. In fact, during September, the 33 GP practices across the borough had around 78,000 face to face appointments in total. We’re also seeing people in their homes more. Imagine your usual GP waiting room in winter and you’ll know it’s impossible to socially distance with those numbers of people. It makes sense to reduce the number of people waiting so that when you do come in for a face to face appointment now, we know everyone can keep that safe distance.

 

We appreciate too that sometimes the lines are busy and you may not get through as fast as you like. It’s frustrating. Our staff don’t want that either, but sometimes if staff have to be off work to self-isolate or for illness, a practice may need to move all its staff to just one surgery site, so they can continue to offer all the usual services they have continued to do over the past six months.

 

By making these temporary changes and adapting, we know we’ve got safe GP services that will see us through the winter.

 

I’d like to finish by saying thank you again. Thank you to you and thank you to those staff from across the borough whose smiley faces looked out at you from the paper six months ago. We all need to keep looking out for each other and stick together.