Agenda and minutes

Apologies were received from Anthony Kelly, Clare Marley, Gerry O'Donnell and Paul Robinson.

David Watkins attended to represent the South Worcestershire District Councils.

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 Members of the public wishing to take part should notify Legal and Democratic Services in writing or by e-mail indicating the nature and content of their proposed participation on items relevant to the agenda, no later than 9.00am on the day before the meeting (in this case 9.00am on 12 November 2018). Enquiries can be made through the telephone number/e-mail address below.

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The minutes of the meeting held on 25 September 2018 were agreed to be a correct record of the meeting and were signed by the Chairman.

The Board were informed that the private meeting scheduled for 23 October had been cancelled but it would take place immediately after the meeting. The private meeting scheduled for 4 December had been cancelled, therefore the next meeting would be the public meeting on 26 February.

Following the joint CQC and Ofsted investigation in March 2018 which looked at education and health issues around Special Education Needs and Disabilities (SEND), 12 areas of weakness were highlighted and the CCGs and Local Authority have produced a joint statement of action and were working together to produce an improvement action plan. 5 work-streams had been identified and the SEND Improvement Board had been charged with producing and overseeing the action plan. In September the SEND Advisor said that the improvement plan was fit for purpose and the improvement journey was moving in the right direction. Communications were important so that parents, families and schools fully understood the SEND offer.

It was emphasised that the organisations on the HWB had a clear leadership responsibility to ensure children with special educational needs got the support they needed in order to grow into productive adults. Everyone had a part to play and there was joint leadership of each work-stream.  The Director of Children, Families and Communities gave credit to Families in Partnership, a voluntary organisation who supported the Parents and Carers of Children with special needs and a co-production event had been held which had helped professionals understand what life was like for families with SEND. Education needed to be more inclusive and a joint workforce development strategy had been put in place.

The next monitoring visit was due on 11 December 2018.  Work programme 1 consisted of the 'Local Offer' and a website had been launched to give advice, information and resources. Twelve workshops were planned to launch the website to parents and professionals.

In the following discussion the following main points were made:

·       The Cabinet Member for Education and Skills wished to endorse the work done so far and encourage the Improvement Board to continue their commitment to the work streams. There were financial pressures but the County Council needed to fulfil its statutory duty to meet the needs of those with SEND and provide appropriate services to meet those needs. Parents, carers and the community needed to be aware of what the local offer was and how to access it. He echoed that the County Council and Health needed to take joint responsibility for the work-streams and he was committed to the improvement journey

·       The representative from Healthwatch endorsed the spirit of the report and the fact that parents and carers were being involved in the improvement programme but wondered what numbers were being dealt with and how the finances would cope in future

·       It was explained that education needed to be more inclusive. A lot of children with SEND could be supported to succeed in mainstream schools but sadly that was not working consistently in Worcestershire. There had been an increase in the  numbers of Education, Health and Care (EHC) Plans, up to over 3000, and that rate of increase was greater in Worcestershire than nationally 

·       Parents thought they needed to get EHC Plans to access SEND services which showed that Worcestershire was not supporting SEND needs  ...  view the full minutes text for item 515.

The Health Improvement Group (HIG) was a sub group of the Health and Well-being Board. The meetings were well attended apart from the police due to operational pressures and the VCS who were in the process of appointing a representative.

The Group had considered various things:

·       the annual update of the Joint Health and Well-being Strategy,

·       the development and delivery of the Worcester City Plan – the delivery of courses to BAME groups such as cooking and finance; statutory services around homelessness and air pollution; the dementia dwelling grant pilot and community connectors scheme, where people could drop in and hear about local opportunities

·       Redditch reported on entry level sports development, VCS grants, and mapping local assets

·       Wychavon – Tesco Evesham events, dementia alliance in and narrowing health inequalities

·       The Annual Report had been produced and showed that the Group was active but organisations needed to remain engaged

·       The Dementia dwelling Grant

·       Warmer Worcestershire Partnership Group

·       CCG update on neighbourhood teams

·       Charter for Homeless Health

As agreed at the last Health and Well-being Board a Prevention Board would be set up and District Councils should have a role on that. Work was on-going on how the Board would look but it would concentrate on a community asset approach.

During the discussion the following main points were made:

·       The title of the relevant Cabinet Member at Wychavon District Council had been changed and now included the phrase 'Health and Well-being'

·       The HIG provided a good opportunity for District Councils to become engaged in the operational work as they had a huge role to play in health and well-being with leisure centres and other well-being services

·       The Cabinet Member for Education and Skills was pleased that the Secretary of State was now speaking about prevention, and was interested to see what decisions were made about how to fund prevention

·       It was clarified that the Prevention Board came from the Director of Public Health Report where the three main strands were creating healthy places; helping people to help themselves and their communities; and prevention services. The scope of the Prevention Board was still being considered but it may meet once or twice to start a programme of work; it would not be an operational Board

·       District input was important and would be needed on the Prevention Board around issues such as licensing and planning

·       A query was raised about insulating houses with no cavities. Enquiries would continue outside the meeting.

RESOLVED that the Health and Well-being Board:

a)     Considered and commented on progress made by the HIG between April 2018 and October 2018;

b)    Supported the scaling up of prevention activities in the priority areas and considered how the Prevention Board proposed within the DPH  Annual report could work alongside district level achievements;

c)     Agreed that each organisation represented by the Board should play an active part in the delivery of the Joint Health and Well-being Strategy and fully participate in providing the necessary updates and information for the reporting of progress.

The Health and Housing Group met in May 2018 and were looking at how to meet the objectives of the Memorandum of Understanding.  The HWB had requested progress be made on Housing related needs assessments and also resources and commissioning. Various activities were on-going:

·       A small group was considering the information already available to see how housing could support care and health. The findings would be brought back to the Board under the JSNA remit. Information would come from District Councils, health and social care, the BCF and people's lived experiences

·       Work had started on looking at where resources and commissioning processes could be combined, for example the review of re-ablement services being organised by the Director of Adult Services

·       The Home Improvement Agency had been re-commissioned and delivered the Disabled Facilities Grant and various advice services. Housing representatives of the Council, District Councils and the CCG attended different meetings to ensure there was closer alignment of commissioning processes

·       The One Public Estate Partnership looked at homes for life and were trying to influence planning policies to help make housing more accessible and adaptable in future

·       Although housing colleagues were now working more closely together more could be done to improve effective working. A senior systems leaders meeting should be organised – including representatives from the Acute Trust to help areas such as hospital discharge and independence at home.

In the ensuing discussion the following points were made:

·       It was agreed that there were lots of strands to be brought together. Tim was thanked for making sense of a difficult area

·       The idea of a Leadership session was supported to complete an ownership gap analysis to ensure that the work which needs to be done was being organised. The Director of Adult Services would be happy to work with someone to organise the session

·       The MoU in reality gives people permission to work together in Neighbourhood Teams to improve things for individuals. A direct service impact could be seen following on from the strategic discussions which happened at Board level

·       There was a challenge for systems leaders to think of the individual rather than the needs of the organisation and make system changes when issues were uncovered.

RESOLVED that the Health and Well-being Board:

a)     Noted the progress across the system on embedding the principles of the MoU in Worcestershire and to practically support and co-ordinate as required; and

b)    Agreed that a system review meeting should be jointly convened with senior officers in the NHS, WCC, and housing agencies to demonstrate best practise options and system change opportunities.

Dates for 2018

Private Development meetings (All at 2pm)

·        4 December 2018

Dates for 2019

Public meetings (All at 2pm)

·        26 February 2019

·        21 May 2019

·        24 September 2019

·        12 November 2019

Private Development meetings (All at 2pm)

·        29 January 2019

·        26 March 2019

·        30 April 2019

·        18 June 2019

·        16 July 2019

·        22 October 2019

·        3 December 2019

Dates for 2019

Public meetings (All at 2pm)

·        26 February 2019

·        21 May 2019

·        24 September 2019

·        12 November 2019

Private Development meetings (All at 2pm)

·        29 January 2019

·        26 March 2019

·        30 April 2019

·        18 June 2019

·        16 July 2019

·        22 October 2019

·        3 December 2019