Agenda item

Dr Katherine Packham, Consultant in Public Health, Leicester City Council to present a report providing a summary of the current status of Leicester’s Health, Care and Wellbeing Strategy and the next steps.

Dr Katherine Packham, Consultant in Public Health, Leicester City Council presented a report providing a summary of the current status of Leicester’s Health, Care and Wellbeing Strategy and the next steps.

It was noted that:-

·         A refresh of Leicester’s Health, Care and Wellbeing strategy has taken place over the last few months. This involved retaining the five themes of Healthy Start, Healthy Living, Healthy Ageing, Healthy Places and Healthy Minds from the previous strategy which was published in 2019.

·         The Board has previously approved a decision to refresh the strategy to reflect challenges that had been highlighted by the pandemic or where the need had increased as a result of the pandemic.

·         A Leicester Place-led Plan Core Working Group was set up to develop the strategy and priorities on behalf of the Board.

·         A series of engagement events, including working with a range of community groups and an online survey, were held between November 2021 and January 2022 with ongoing engagement with a number of partnership groups.

·         The strategy would be presented to Health and Overview and Scrutiny committee in August 2022 where comments and feedback would be sought, before the final strategy was brough back to the Board together with a draft delivery plan.

·         The delivery/implementation plan was in the early stages of development and focused on the six ‘do’ priorities of:-

o   Healthy Places: Improving access to primary and community health/ care services

o   Healthy Start: Mitigating the impacts of poverty on children and young people

o   Healthy Living: Increasing early detection of heart & lung diseases and cancer in adults

o   Healthy Minds: Improving access to primary & neighbourhood level Mental Health services for adults.

o   Healthy Minds: Increasing access for children & young people to Mental Health & emotional wellbeing services.

o   Healthy Ageing: Enabling Leicester’s residents to age comfortably and confidently -  proposed focus on reducing health inequalities through a person-centred programme of frailty prevention.  (this wording was subject to change).

Members of the Board commented:-

·         That a good majority of GP practices in east and south of the City had patients from different ethnicity and languages and it would be helpful to look at a mix and match of language skills and to see if these can moved around to have a robust system to improve language access to service to overcome the barriers.

·         Sports clubs would welcome a meeting with the Council as they were  keen to contribute to Healthy Minds through sport and physical activity  but were unsure how this could be developed and wanted to understand how to capture synergy, avoid duplication with other initiatives and add value and ensure they were delivering initiatives to the right people in the right circumstances

·         The strategy should influence how services were enabled in the future. The strategy should have elements of skilling within it so it built services but also taught people how to drive changes and improvements.

 In response to Members comments officers commented that:-

·         Three items in the delivery plan related to language and how access to services could be improved.

·         The priorities were refreshed rather than started again from scratch.  There were likely to be impacts of the pandemic but these were not fully understood yet on health, employment, reduced income and cost of living crisis.  The priorities would be reviewed in 5 years.  The previous strategy did not have a dashboard reporting element, but this would be built into the delivery plan.  Most of the priorities were still largely the same as in the last strategy

·         It was recognised that a lot of public data had a time lag in accuracy  but other current data sources were also used and monitored.

·         It would be helpful if different organisations with finds available for accessing mental health services could be aligned to ensure the best outcomes based upon need. The challenge with the implementation was to make sure it happened, and partners needed to know what was needed and to work together to deliver and use resources differently based on what was identified in strategy

·         The was a huge role to be played for a range of organisations.  Voluntary and community sector organisations and other large employers such as the universities, police and sports groups should contact officers working on mental health issues in Public Health for assistance. 

·         There was merit in getting all major employers to align activities and initiatives so it improved Leicester as a good place to work and improve wellbeing.

The Chair commented that the issues in developing the delivery plan would be a major focus in a private development session of the Board which would  enable a focused approach to the delivery plan

RESOLVED:-            That the timelines and next steps for Leicester’s Health, Care and Wellbeing Strategy be noted and the delivery plan be discussed at a private development session of the Board.