Health and local services

From manifesto event

KEY PRINCIPLES
-Defend current services being cut
AND
-Shift away from services/consumption model to ‘co-production’ because issues are better solved in communities
--empowerment is central in this process.
POLICIES
-Commissioning priorities could be shifted from private to community
-Create parallel funds
-Food -- there could be new developing spaces for community food growing
-stop selling public land
-community hubs/drop-in centres provided - and funds to support the community

Decisions should be made at the lowest level possible

Communities should be able to create theur own councils which are dominant over higher levels, not subordinate (funded directly, maybe by a new wealth tax or something? )

Any unused space reverts to these community councils

Lots of good stuff here. Hard to pick out a single best one in terms of awesomeness/feasibility ratio.

Community Councils stands out to me as both awesome, and to some extent feasible under the GLA remit. Except I doubt we could legally enforce their power, as the GLA was set up by an Act of Parliament, so I guess Parliament would had have to amend that act to officially change the decision-making structure. But we could say we'd campaign for that to happen, and in the meantime to campaign to give them as much responsibility as possible, and to be their voice in the London Assembly.

Funding, as you suggest, would also be tricky to work out. Maybe at first they just need space, and surely we could find space in government buildings for them to meet once a week? But probably they deserve paid coordinating staff too...

FIGHT SERVICES CUTS is probably the simplest headline we could pick.

Did we have any notes/proposals on protection of mental health services?

Can't find anything on that in the demands spreadsheet (just adding a link to that to the Manifesto Group description).

But the public Manifesto Event did begin with a great speech by Holly, pleading for mental health services to be a priority. I think that counts!

Oh and there were some great things from the demands workshop me and Dhelia did at an autism community centre place. I'll see if I can find notes on that...

Ok these were their top 4 demands:

1) More accessible, non-discriminatory employment, (this was an amalgam of two more specific demands: more accessible employment training, and tackle discrimination in the workplace)

2) More accessible disability benefit

3) enforce the legal requirement for ASD centres in every borough.

4) Make it possible/easier to challenge the council without recourse to the law.