REACH Wokingham, Reading Families Forum and West Berkshire Parent Carer Forum have presented the results of the Dingley Children’s Centre & Hydrotherapy Pool Survey to the Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust. The survey results can be found here: Dingley & Hydrotherapy Survey Results
We have received the following message from Mary Sherry, the RBFT Deputy Chief Executive:
“Dingley.
First and foremost we are committed to continuing to provide services to children using Dingley. It is correct that the current site has been sold by Berkshire Healthcare and we are unfortunately required to vacate by June. I am sure you can appreciate that this has been a complex issue to work through and several options for an alternative location have been considered.
We are now in the process of actively considering viable options for a replacement location, which will allow these services to remain in close proximity to the main Royal Berkshire Hospital site. It has taken some time to get here but we will be reviewing these in more detail over the next few weeks, working with our clinical team and, importantly, users of the service. Our intention would be to confirm the relocated site for the Dingley service by end February 2017.
We are grateful to partner agencies for working closely with us to ensure we have the most appropriate solution for the provision of Dingley services. In the early stages of planning the required change of location for Dingley, we did have strong user engagement and we are grateful for that input which we have actively used in considering a way forward. We recognise that during the intervening time our communications with parents and partners has been less and that we should have kept parents and partners more up to date with progress. I would like to apologise for the anxiety this lack of communication has caused.
We are at a stage now where we can continue to work with service users and their representatives to ensure that the relocation of Dingley continues to support the children that benefit from this service, as this is obviously the most important aspect. I would like to assure you that there will be no interruption of the Dingley services throughout the transition period and we will be working with our service users and stakeholders to manage this in the most effective way.
Hydrotherapy
As you will have seen from the local media the Board of the Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust has agreed to defer the closure of the hydrotherapy pool originally scheduled for 31 March 2017 until 30 June 2017. During this period the pool will continue to be fully operational. The Trust will engage with existing users of the facility and a range of stakeholders. Reading West MP Alok Sharma, has kindly agreed to help facilitate a stake holder forum”.
REACH Wokingham will keep you updated with further news
