Agenda item

Geoff Rowbotham, Interim Programme Director Better Care Together, to submit a report providing an update on the progress of the Better Care Together Strategy.

Geoff Rowbotham, Interim Programme Director Better Care Together, submitted a report providing an update on the progress of the Better Care Together Strategy.

The report noted that the Better Care Together (BCT) Programme Board was responsible for the production of the 5 year strategic plan for the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland (LLR) health and social care system. The Programme Board included local social care, health commissioners and providers, public and patient representatives. It was supported by a structure of clinical, patient, public, and political reference groups, and by enabling groups e.g. Estates, Workforce, Information Technology.

The BCT Programme Board had taken a phased approach to the production of the 5 year strategic plan: development (to June 2014); discussion and review (June to Sept 2014) and, implementation and formal consultation where required (Oct onwards).  A draft plan had been made available to the public as part of the ‘discussion and review stage’.  It had also been received by Health and Wellbeing Boards and Healthwatch groups across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland. Comments received were being incorporated within the draft plan through a ‘You said, we did’ section prior to it being proposed for formal approval alongside the supporting Programme Initiation Document (PID) and Strategic Outline Case (SOC)

During July –August 2014 the BCT programme has been focused on:-

i.     LLR draft 5 year plan- ‘discussion and review’ phase.

ii.    Leadership and governance of the BCT programme.

iii.   Developing, resourcing and commencing service reconfiguration.

Considerable progress had been made during the past 8 weeks resulting in the programme being on schedule; despite the challenging timescales it had set itself. The report intended to provide a high level update on progress during this time and highlighted the key programme priorities for the next 3 months.

The Interim Programme Director made the following observations and comments on the progress that had been made:-

·         There had been extensive consultation in the discussion and review phase with public and patient groups, voluntary and community sectors groups and Healthwatch which had produced a number of comments around the plan.

·         The responses to the ‘You said – we did’ section of the plan would be taken back to the public and patient groups etc for comment and approval before being formally being submitted to the Board in November.

·         There were now Public and Patient Involvement representatives on all programme streams.

·         Kaye Burnett had now been recruited as a permanent Chair of the BCT Partnership Board and would take up the duties later in October.  Thanks were extended to Philip Parkinson for his work as Interim Chair of the Board.

·         The BCT Board had agreed that it would meet in public from the New Year and this would strengthen the engagement and transparency aspects within the governance arrangements.

·         All of the 8 work streams were due to be completed by the end of October.

·         The Plan had been extensively reviewed by all key stakeholders in the local health economy.

·         Two key supporting documents to the Plan were also being developed.  A Programme Initiation Document (PID) setting out how the Plan will be initiated, governed and delivered; and a Strategic Outline Case (SOC) to ensure the proposed way forward of all the individual organisations’ business cases represents value for money.  The Plan together with these two documents would be submitted to the Board and other bodies in for approval in December.

Following questions for the Members of the Board, it was noted that:-

·         It was important to recognise the scale and complexity of the programme within the national context.  The programme had a strong management approach with designated accountable actions and targets.

·         The Plan’s assurance programme would be made public in January 2015 and it would then be clear what progress had been made and whether the Plan’s delivery was on target.

·         The Board’s Assurance Framework identified the key risks and how those risks would be managed.

·         The programme was already open to public scrutiny by a range of public bodies such as the Board and by individual participants in the programme who played a vital role in holding the programme to account.

·         The Office of Government Commerce were commencing an external gateway best practice review to ensure that the programme was on track.

·         If the programme was successful the public should not see any difference in their health care if it succeeded in them not going into hospital, as they would not necessarily realise that they were receiving the appropriate level care in the primary care sector instead of being admitted into hospital.

·         There were already clear indications that UHL and LPT were working closely to discuss arrangements for transferring patient support to the community rather than UHL embarking on a course of action independently which subsequently would impact upon LPT requiring them to take reactive measures.

·         There was also closer working with the social care sector at an earlier stage to see how the social care budgets could be integrated to achieve the aims of the programme. 

The Chair reported that he had received three questions from a member of the public who was unable to attend the meeting and proposed that the Interim Programme Director would respond to them after the meeting and the response be included with the minutes of the meeting.

RESOLVED:-

1.         That the considerable progress that had been made since the last update report and the next key steps to be taken be noted.

2.         That the Interim Programme Director be thanked for the update.

3.         That the responses to the questions asked by the member of the public be circulated with the minutes of the meeting. (Note: The responses are attached to these minutes)