Issue - meetings

The Board received a report and presentation from Natasha Moody and Helen Riley, Staffordshire County Council on the ‘Working Together Protocol – Strategic Partnership Boards in Staffordshire’.

The Board were informed of the current situation with regard to the governance structure and connectivity across statutory Boards. Other local areas have adopted a partnership protocol, the purpose of which was to provide more efficiency and better outcomes.

The benefits of the protocol would:

-       Ensure the safety, health and wellbeing of people in Staffordshire are collectively addressed;

-       Identify the lead partnership and respective responsibilities and priorities;

-       Provide clarity of focus for each partnership body;

-       Share appropriate information across partnerships and member organisations to provide greater depth to issues;

-       Where there are shared problems, boards would work together to formulate solutions by taking a joined-up approach; and

-       Ensure that a shared approach to reviews of serious cases in the county and the learning to emerge from these informs the right partnerships.

Next steps have been defined which included:

-       Chairs continue to meet and discuss joint work and how they can work better together;

-       Share board priorities to agree clarity of leadership of agendas moving forwards and also understand partners perspectives on the on the priorities; and

-       Map the governance for each of the boards to provide opportunities to review and better alignment with existing structures.

The Board welcomed the approach and agreed that feedback would be provided via email. Jon Topham was nominated as the operational lead from the Board for this piece of work.

Resolved – The Board were asked to:

a)       Review, provide feedback and ultimately endorse the partnership protocol;

b)       Review and provide an organogram for the boards sub-reporting structures; and

c)       Share the boards plans with the chairs of the other strategic boards to agree the leadership and reporting of shared agendas moving forward.