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Families are the biggest providers of care, yet carers can find themselves cut out of decision-making and bounced between different bureaucracies Caring is a fact of life. Whether a partner falls ill, or a parent needs support as they grow older, or a child is born with a disability – it will affect us all at some point. At times like these, families pull together to support each other. But too often they find that the services there to support them don't do the same. If you care for someone and they need support, you don't really care whether it is the NHS, a local council or nearby mental...

Sponsored Q&A: how can higher education better prepare students for a patient-centered NHS? Join our panel of experts on Friday 17 May 12-2pm BST The inquiry into the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of patients at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust earlier this year, has left an unsettling nervousness around patient safety in the NHS. Between 400 and 1,200 patients are believed to have died between January 2005 and March 2009 as a result of poor care at the hospital. In response, a report by Robert Francis QC proposed 290 recommendations to improve patient safety and care, and combat what...

The chair of the NHSLA board on changes in the health service, her life as an academic and why diversity is slipping back What does the NHS litigation authority do? We are essentially a mutual insurance company for the NHS in England. We indemnify NHS organisations against negligence claims, and in particular claims for clinical negligence. We also try and stop claims being brought in the first place by feeding back lessons to NHS organisations on what can potentially go wrong. Why did you first become involved in the health sector as a non-executive? I've got the NHS in my blood; it runs through...

If we reduce migrants' access to GPs we increase the amount of disease within the population and drive up admissions to A&E Migrants already have significantly less entitlement to use the NHS than the general population. Their current situation is an injustice, and they are suffering the constant threat of further restriction. Prime minister David Cameron has accused some foreign nationals of taking advantage of public services including the NHS and has said the government is looking for ways to make them pay for access. As the situation stands, on primary care settings, applications to...

Following the Francis report, the NHS Confederation was asked to review bureaucracy. Mike Farrar reveals some early findings The NHS has experienced numerous attempts to free staff from the shackles of unnecessary paperwork to allow more time for patient care. These efforts have seemed little more than pruning projects − bureaucracy is cut back for a short period before it grows back thicker and stronger the next year. People have asked why our bureaucracy and regulation review should be any different to what has gone before. In the wake of Mid Staffs, public and political desire for greater external...

Our latest survey asked healthcare professionals how ready they thought organisations such as clinical commissing groups and health and wellbeing boards were to take up their new responsibilities. Here is a selection of their answers "I believe that a lot of these new structures will be in place, but whether they are ready to commission a full range of services, I doubt it." "Primary care and clinical commissioning groups are ready and have been for some time. Secondary care is not ready because for years they have refused to talk to primary care and actually work out common and...

A look at the members that make up the body that will run the health service in England from next month Professor Malcolm Grant, chair The president and provost of University College London, he is described by a colleague as having "a brain the size of a planet and is a natural leader – clear and very challenging of assumptions, but in a constructive way – who understands how to take organisations forward. And he understands the importance of the NHS's key values". But he left some MPs on the health select committee unimpressed when they scrutinised his appointment by then health...

The fundamental problem with the trust was structural and is likely to herald a reconfiguration process in UK healthcare The South London healthcare trust (SLHT) could never work as a single organisation. It was formed in April 2009 as a result of the merger of three struggling acute healthcare organisations in south London, and actively sponsored by the Strategic Health Authority for London (NHS London). The merger was intended to act as the blueprint for future mergers in the capital in order to remove "excess" acute capacity and assist with balancing limited healthcare financial resources...