Politics: Our most significant work this year has been political campaigning, first over a useful tax advantage for the National Health Service (NHS) in its purchases of incontinence pads and then more importantly in defence of the services available to patients as cuts in NHS budgets produced waiting lists and stricter rules to reduce the numbers who qualified for free provision (in particular) of incontinence pads.
We wrote many letters to Ministers, briefed about 70 MPs on the tax issue, and wrote to about 50 other voluntary organisations two or three times during the year to keep them up to date with the issues. We took a leading role in the "Continence Campaign", which was financially supported by SCA Hygiene Products: this campaign has as its main demand the recognition by the Government of a minimum standard of service that should be reliably available to patients with bladder and bowel control problems. The Campaign was launched at a reception at the House of Commons in December: over 20 members of both Houses of Parliament attended. Through the Campaign, we got over 20 Parliamentary Questions asked and three "early day" motions placed on the Commons Order Paper.
Overall, dozens of letters were sent to MPs and they in turn sought answers from Ministers. Later, the Director spoke to one of the monthly meetings of the influential backbench Parliamentary All Party Disablement Group. We also prepared a letter to the Secretary of State which was jointly signed by ourselves, the Association for Continence Advice, the Royal College of Nursing Continence Care Forum and Incontact, rehearsing the grounds for alarm and seeking reassurance about the future of continence services. Under this pressure the Secretary of State announced in January that "urgent attention" was being given to ways of alleviating the tax problem referred to and there were firm reports in the press that compensatory increases in budgets would be provided. However, nothing of the kind was forthcoming.
What we did win, however, which is potentially much more valuable, was an official review of NHS policy. The Foundation consulted its affiliates and then submitted a detailed memorandum to the Department of Health on the scope and desired outcomes of the review. At the time of writing the outcome of the review is awaited.
During the year, the Foundation submitted evidence to the Royal Commission on Long Term Care of the Elderly, met the Opposition Chief Spokesperson on Health to brief him on continence services, and took up with the NHS and with MPs individual cases where people had clear grounds for complaint.
Publications: We published the third edition of our Directory of Continence Products, which now runs to 319 pages of detailed listings of products on the UK market. The Directory provides the foundation for the work of PromoCon, a project, jointly sponsored by the Continence Foundation and the Disabled Living Centres Council, that focuses on the promotion of continence through better products and product awareness and has a standing exhibition of most of the products in the Directory at Disabled Living in Manchester.
We have also produced a new edition of our Index of Continence Services, listing details of NHS and private continence services throughout the UK; a reprint of the consensus statement on prevention of incontinence that was produced by 1997's international conference; and a plastic-encapsulated card intended to help GPs diagnose and treat the many forms of urinary and faecal incontinence.
Helpline: The telephone Helpline continues at the heart of what the Foundation does - helping people who are often desperate for information and reassurance, sometimes after years of suffering in embarrassed silence. The number of calls to the Helpline rose by over 13% in the year. At the end of the year, having been forced by the end of our lease to find a new headquarters office, we moved the Helpline operation from Newcastle-upon-Tyne to the new office in London. Sadly this entailed making our Newcastle staff redundant but we have recruited two new part-time nurses in London and the overall advantages of the change are enormous.
Friends of the Continence Foundation: The Trustees have decided to open up membership of the Foundation, under the rubric "Friends of the Continence Foundation", to anyone interested. This initiative is intended to raise some funds (we now have no Government grant towards our running costs) and to provide a channel whereby the Foundation can keep people informed about its activities. It was launched in June 1998 with the publication of the first issue of a Newsletter for Friends giving details of the NHS policy review, and many subscriptions have been received.
David Pollock