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Agenda item

Agenda item

HEALTH AND WELLBEING STRATEGY

The Director of Public Health to make a presentation to inform members that the new Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy and Action plan is in final draft form and due to enter the public consultation phase in mid-July.

 

The presentation explains the progress that has been made and invites Board members to become involved in the consultation process and to encourage others to do the same.

Minutes:

The Director of Public Health gave a presentation to inform members that the new Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy and Action plan was in final draft form and due to enter the public consultation phase in mid-July.

 

The presentation explained the progress that had been made and invited Board members to become involved in the consultation process and to encourage others to do the same.

 

It was noted that all partners had engaged in collaborative approach in developing the strategy.  As part of the process, officers had made presentations to a number of partners and key stakeholders, including the Joint Integrated Commissioning Board, Children’s Trust Board, Adult Social Care and Health and Wellbeing Scrutiny Commissions etc, to confirm whether the right issues were being picked up and addressed in the strategy.  This process had identified some key themes that people wanted to see included in the strategy and it had been encouraging that those taking part had not been parochial about their own service areas of interest but were actively looking holistically at all the issues.

 

The process for the development of the emerging strategy had not focussed on a specific range of identified health conditions but on the underlying causes that were driving people into ill health, acute services and Police services etc and to look at these drivers in an holistic way.

 

Adult Social Care had identified key issues such as ‘Social Isolation’ as a key factor and, whilst other partners agreed with and welcomed this approach, they were also keen to ensure that the strategy also included other on-going health issues such as treating patients with multi morbidity issues.  The strategy tried to match up key areas that came out of the workshops such as healthy places, healthy minds and healthy lives etc and then tried to make these themes match up with what was already happening in the system.

 

For example, officers went to New College as part of this process to discuss the emerging key areas around their own strategy for the health and wellbeing of students.  These discussions identified that the College staff felt that educating students and getting them to a better level of health was part of the day to day responsibility of the College and did not need to be included in the strategy; but what should be included in the strategy were things like domestic violence, poverty and hunger which were seen as contributing to ‘blocks’ in enabling staff to educate students.

 

There were still 18 objectives within the strategy and it was felt that these would be refined as the consultation progressed and that some would eventually be combined and others would need to be added.

 

There was an Action Plan behind the overall process which identified the broad objectives and had specific actions behind each objective.  It was not intended to create another strategy that did not fit in with or bear any resemblance to other policies and strategies that were already in existence within the Council and partner agencies and bodies. A current challenge was trying to identify a suitable suite of metrics to use as a definitive measure of monitoring the success of initiatives.

 

Overall the general feedback to the engagement process had been positive and views were expressed that the strategy seemed pragmatic and was developing along the right lines

 

Partners and stakeholders had asked that the consultation timetable be delayed from the original summer period until autumn (September- December) in order to enable organisations to be better engaged and submit responses.  It was intended to visit to organisations/partners and stakeholders such as the fire and police services and CCG etc to launch the consultation process.   The Universities had already accepted invitations to talk to them.  Positive feedback had also been received from Healthwatch and VAL.  Officers requested that partners invite their strategic partners and stakeholders to events where officers were consulting on the strategy to enable as wide a participation as possible.

 

It was envisaged that the final version of the strategy would be available in December/January.

 

Councillor Russell commented that the Children’s Trust had really engaged with the process and were excited to be able to be part of the strategy and had seen the strategy as a resource and a way to identify issues within their own organisation.  It would also give a useful reference point of where a particular issue sat within the overall strategy, what to aim for, and what others were already doing on the issue that worked.  It also gave them an opportunity to contribute to the resource if they felt they were doing something that worked well within their organisation and could be shared with others.  There was a genuine feeling of being engaged and understanding their part in it the process.  The strategy was seen positively as being an ongoing living document and not just a document that was produced for a specific point in time and would then be forgotten.

 

The Chair commented that he wanted the Board to have ownership of the strategy and drive its future agenda forward to deliver its outcomes to improve the city’s health and wellbeing.

 

RESOLVED:-

 

1)    That the dates of the consultation phase be noted.

 

2)    That partners on the Board engage in the strategy through the consultation process

 

3)    That the Board champions engagement amongst partners and stakeholders wherever possible.

Supporting documents: