There has been a model response to a campaign to save a threatened Huddersfield health centre.
And campaigners fighting to save the Huddersfield University Health Centre believe it will highlight their fight.
The LEGO model of the doctor’s surgery, empty with its doors chained together and a group of tiny people milling around outside, is regarded as powerful because children use the toy bricks to build their own model communities.
And those communities include fire stations, schools, hospitals and surgeries.
The model of the empty Huddersfield University Health Centre has been built by Robert Clarkson, a volunteer with Huddersfield charity Fairy Bricks, who buy and donate LEGO sets to children’s hospitals and hospices.
READ MORE: How Good is Your Local Surgery? - See how yours performed here
Fairy Bricks ‘Chief Fairy’, Kevin Gascoigne, asked Robert to build the model after he heard that the health centre, which cares for 12,500 patients, is about to see its funding cut by a third and could even have to close.
Kevin has been a patient at the health centre for 22 years and the care he receives there is so good that it has even influenced where he bought a house. However, along with other patients he was shocked to find early last week that the centre’s funding is to be cut by a crippling 33%.
The cuts are the result of a review of GP contracts. Some 60% of Huddersfield GP practices will be affected, but the University Health Centre and Slaithwaite Health Centre (whose funding will be cut by a whopping 44%) are the worst affected.
GP partners at both surgeries are warning that, if the cuts go ahead, the practices will rapidly become unsafe and they will be forced to resign.
Staff at the University Health Centre are both delighted and moved by the model which they have given pride of place in the surgery’s waiting room, now dominated by their campaign to stop the cuts.
Practice manager Janet Hallam said: “We care for a high proportion of vulnerable, unsupported young people, who are taking responsibility for their own healthcare often for the first time.
READ MORE: 'Extinction' threatened Slaithwaite surgery holds own consultation - because NHS chiefs haven't
READ MORE: Huddersfield University health expert fears for NHS after latest cuts revealed
“Kevin’s model is a bleak reminder of what might happen if these cuts go ahead.
“Students don’t have their family support network around them – we are that network. If we can’t care for them adequately, they’ll turn to A&E and 111 services, which we all know are already overstretched.
“We’ve been telling NHS England of our concerns for two years now. But they ignore our letters and phonecalls and it looks as if they intend to press forward with their plans.”
