Assisted dying, palliative care and patient choice | Letters

Campaigners say care users face a postcode lottery for support overseas – despite no extra cost to taxpayer Disabled people are being blocked from travelling abroad by NHS care boards and local councils that refuse to let them use their care funding outside the UK, the Guardian has learned. Campaigners warn of a “postcode lottery” in England where the right of a disabled person to travel overseas depends on where they live or the whim of local officials – even when there is no extra cost to the taxpayer...

Alison Smith says food bans do not improve compliance, they create a false sense of security in patients As the mother of a child with anaphylactic allergies, I am sympathetic to the terror that Lucy Pasha-Robinson describes (Food allergies when flying are no joke. That’s why nuts should be banned on planes, 27 August). Indeed, last summer I spent six hours compulsively cleaning on a demonstrably filthy flight. Flight crew handed out wipes to passengers “to clean your tray tables”, then proceeded to serve packets of cashews (my child’s anaphylactic nut) with drinks. My nerves were shredded by the time we arrived in Chicago. However, I am firmly against the banning of nuts from the skies. Food bans do not improve compliance, and they create a false sense of security in patients...

Helen Macdonald responds to a report by the parliamentary and health service ombudsman The parliamentary and health service ombudsman’s findings are stark and sadly familiar (Autism and ADHD care complaints more than triple in five years in England, 26 August). A more than 200% rise in complaints, years-long waits, patients paying thousands of pounds for private care when the NHS fails them, and a system so complex that people are routinely denied rights they are legally entitled to – these are exactly the issues that the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP) has been documenting and raising for years. What the ombudsman’s report does not fully address is what happens once people are assessed and diagnosed. Too many people with ADHD and autism receive a diagnosis only to find that there is no evidence-based treatment pathway attached to it. Cognitive behavioural therapy is recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence for the anxiety and depression that commonly accompany neurodevelopmental conditions, and in specific contexts for adults with ADHD itself. Yet workforce shortages mean that even where the clinical will exists, the capacity often does not. A diagnosis without access to appropriate treatment is a hollow outcome...