Concerns for future of public service

Dear Editor During a recent visit to Perth and relatives in Scotland I picked up a copy of the Perthshire Advertiser.

Reading through it and the letters pages, I joined the likes of Guto Bebb - the minister who was despondent at finding Edinburgh and the foreign country of Scotland because of how far removed Perth was from the city I have grown to know and love over the years.

Stories on head teachers calling for parental assistance because of a shortage of staff, not enough nurses at PRI and staff at Murray Royal Hospital left me thinking how sad things had become.

While Perthshire is not alone with problems such as these, the off-hand responses from NHS and council officials about the crises were worrying.

Sure, in parts of England there are schools asking parents to give around £250 a month to back up the shortfall in budgets, and some of them have parents being asked to assist teachers in the classroom, but being asked to teach, that takes it to another level.

There’s no hiding from the message, no matter what retraction there was in the wake of the story.

Likewise, people should be asking why junior doctors and frontline health staff are not coming to Perth and Kinross.

To me, Perth and Kinross has become a victim of the brain drain and at the other end, a good will washout.

When you have shortages of GPs for out of hours services and a dependency on agency staff to cover shifts at the hospitals, that reflects that there’s something wrong with the conditions: perhaps the hours don’t suit, perhaps the work/life balance is wrong? Perhaps people are just sick of toiling and getting less and less out of it.

Whatever the reason, the powers that be - NHS Tayside, Perth and Kinross Council, the Scottish Government, etc - needed to have done something sooner to resolve the issues.

As a former health care worker myself, prevention is better than cure was the mantra we lived with.

Now the remedy is less clear, and those on the outside looking in, including the potential next generation of workers, will be thinking it’s just simply not worth joining professions if they cannot be a vocation.

I feel sorry for the next generation. Name and address supplied