Agenda and minutes

There were no Declarations of Interest on this occasion.

The Chair provided an update on matters arising from the previous Staffordshire Health and Wellbeing Board meeting.

Resolved – That the minutes of the previous meeting be agreed and signed as an accurate record.

None received.

The Board received a report from Tony Bullock on the Better Health Staffordshire programme and the progress made to date.

Progress so far centred on two stages. The first of which was identifying three pathfinder areas which were agreed to design, test and build the methodology and campaign. These were:

-      Cannock Chase District Council;

-      Staffordshire Moorlands District Council; and

-      East Staffordshire Borough Council.

The pathfinders involved a central team supporting local partners. Workshops were delivered with local partners, the goal of which was to improve understanding of the issues and creating a shared vision of what needed to be achieved. The final workshop saw each area produce an action list which would form the basis of activity in each area. Citizens Enquiry programmes were run in parallel with the workshops, which identified a number of priorities.

Stage two of progress to date was building on the lessons learned from the first three pathfinder areas, and had resulted in three further areas close to launching:

-      South Staffordshire District Council;

-      Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council; and

-      Stafford Borough Council

Stage three rollout would see the team engaging with Tamworth and Lichfield, and delivering workshops in November 2023, with the aim of having their first local partnership meetings at the end of January 2024.

Once all eight districts were on board by January 2024, the plan was to produce a system-wide Action Plan, agreed at a locality level and would address the key issues impacting excess weight and lack of physical activity across the County. 

Councillor Sutton queried whether the 0-19 service / age group had been considered or whether the focus was more on the areas within Staffordshire. In response, Tony clarified that this was an all-age plan and was in fact engineered by the Children and Young People team, and partners from both Childrens and Adults are on board.

Councillor Jessel asked what the mechanism was for ensuring that the Districts and Boroughs take the opportunity to work with their communities and influence. Tony informed the Board that partnership working was embedded from the very start, including partners from Health and local authorities being instrumental in the design stages, rather than solely a County Council effort.

Resolved – That the Board (a) note the progress made on the Better Health Staffordshire Programme; and

(b) continue to encourage organisations to support the programme. 

The Board received a report and presentation from Chris Bird on the Integrated Care System Joint Forward Plan (JFP).

The presentation provided background into the JFP and where this sat within the NHS planning guidance. The ICB are required to co-ordinate production of three planning documents, including:

-      Integrated Care Partnership Strategy

-      Operational Plan for 2023/24

-      Joint Forward Plan for 2023/24 – 2028/29

The principles of the JFP were highlighted to the Board, with a particular focus on how the NHS would contribute to meeting the health needs of the local population.

The Board were reminded of what the JFP was and what information was included within the document. In developing the content, it focussed on the following areas:

-      Our Commitment / Our Ambitions and Priorities

-      Why is this important for our population?

-      How do we plan to make a difference?

-      How will we know we are making a difference?

-      What do we know about people’s local experiences?

The Board were shown a slide which demonstrated how the strategies for both Stoke-on-Trent City Council and Staffordshire County Council were aligned with the Integrated Care Partnership Strategy priorities and developed the final eight priorities for the JFP.

Key dates were shared with the Board. The document would be circulated to the ICB Board on the 15^th June, whereby delegated approval would be sought for any final amendments, with the final document being published on the 30^th June 2023.

Garry Jones referred to the lack of reference around hospitals in the south of the County, primarily those in Wolverhampton, but also in Derby/Burton, where the plan presented to the Board omits these. It was clarified that from an NHS England planning perspective, ICS areas are co-ordinated with a one-to-one relationship with hospitals, therefore the Royal Wolverhampton Trust would fall under the Black Country ICS and University Hospitals of Derby and Burton fall under the Derby and Derbyshire ICS. Efforts had been made that the voice of those partners was represented in the plan and it was noted that whilst other hospitals are headquartered under other ICBs, they did serve the residents of Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent. Garry further noted that better emphasis could be included as part of the diagram on page 9 of the JFP to highlight this.

Councillor Jessel noted a couple of issues, in particular:

-      Page 57 – reference to annual increase of workforce numbers, and a lot of the plan was based on this resource being available. It was queried whether there should be more of a focus on the hours worked rather than the amount of people, as a number of people work part-time and therefore the availability isn’t present.

-      Throughout the document – narrow references to digital and having access to information online however little recognition on assisted technology and AI by way of online assessments.

In response, Chris highlighted that there was a degree of oversight and regulation from NHS England, whereby the established mechanism  ...  view the full minutes text for item 3.

The Board received a report and presentation from Baz Tameez on the Healthwatch Staffordshire service.

The presentation provided an update on Healthwatch for 2022-23, including:

-      The annual report for 2022-23

-      The key highlights on year 1 of the ‘new’ Healthwatch

-      Joint Enter & View and Quality Assurance visits

-      Systems change

-      Year 2 priorities and deep dives

Priorities for Healthwatch centre around reactive work and proactive work.

Reactive work includes:

-      Lack of Access to Primary and Secondary Care

-      Lack of NHS Dentistry appointments

-      Issues around cost of living and winter

-      Long A&E waiting times and ambulances

-      NHS strikes

-      Delays in hospital discharges

Proactive work includes:

-      3 deep dives (to be published in November 2023)

o   Accessing primary care face to face

o   Being a seldom heart / LGBTQI+ patient/resident in the system

o   Root causes of good and poor teenage mental wellbeing and health outcomes

-      Healthwatch Intelligence Network (HWIN) – increasing with many Support Staffordshire members as part of the network

-      Joint Enter and View / Quality Visits – working closely with MPFT and UHDB to undertake joined up working on inspections

-      E-bulletins – distributed regularly

-      Healthwatch annual report

The Board were shown the outlook for Year 2 of Healthwatch. It was hoped that deep dives would be completed by November 2023, and Joint Enter and View / Quality Visits built upon at various business centres. A number of key themes to be engaging in moving forward was presented to the Board, including:

-      Hospital discharges

-      Frailty

-      Social care

-      Access to primary care / dentistry

-      Seldom heard / rurality

-      Mental health – George Bryan and St Georges Hospital

Carmel Warren highlighted the Fall service, set up by the Fire Service and recommissioned by the Integrated Care Board (ICB) for another year, across the County, provided 7 days a week from 8am-7pm.

Resolved – That the Board (a) consider and comment on the progress made in 2022-23 by the new Healthwatch Staffordshire service; and

(b) consider and comment on the Healthwatch Annual Report and give a view on the progress made within the annual report.

The Board received a report from Ian Vinall, Independent Scrutineer and Chair, on the Staffordshire Safeguarding Children Board (SSCB) Annual Report 2021/22.

The report highlighted the requirement for the SSCB to report annually on the progress made by the three statutory safeguarding partners to enable robust scrutiny of its functions.

Since the last annual report, the SSCB continued to make good progress on a wide range of objectives through partnership working, despite the Covid pandemic, economic climate and restructuring.

The main priorities for the Board focussed around neglect and child exploitation, and also looked at the following topics:

-      Ensuring effective multi-agency safeguarding practice

-      Listening to children and families

-      Transformational programme

-      Multi-agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH)

-      Working with educational settings

-      Inspections

-      Policy and Performance

-      Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews

-      Learning from Child Deaths

-      Review of Restraints

Councillor Jessel highlighted concerns around the learning from child deaths and enquired what mechanism was in place to ensure that key areas of work had been identified and being sure as a partnership that all necessary actions had been undertaken. It was noted that actions and evidence on this topic could be found in the Child Death Overview Panel report.

It was further noted that the next annual report would make comments and conclusions on how the arrangements of the Board were impacting children and young people specifically.

Resolved – That the Board (a) receive the report to understand what the safeguarding partners of Staffordshire Safeguarding Children Board (SSCB) have done as a result of the arrangements, including on child safeguarding practice reviews, and how effective these arrangements have been in practice; and

(b) consider or comment on the progress that the Board has made since the previous 2020/21 Annual Report.

The Board received a report from Emma Sandbach on updating the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) in Staffordshire.

The JSNA is a statutory requirement for the organisation to produce and provides an overview of the health and wellbeing needs of the population.

Staffordshire County Council, District and Borough Councils and the Integrated Care Board had worked together to develop an interactive JSNA tool that offered up to date data and intelligence at different levels and would incorporate Health Inequalities Profiles, as requested by the Staffordshire Leaders Board.

A working group had been established to oversee the development of the tool, and a short questionnaire would be used to capture partner requirements and priorities. A scoping document would then be presented and work would begin to produce the tool.

It was expected that the tool would be available for testing from October 2023 and completed by December 2023.

Resolved – That the Board support the development of the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment and note the timescale for its development.

The Board received an update for information from Richard Harling on the Healthy Ageing Workshops.

Two workshop events were held to co-produce the joint Healthy Ageing Plan for Staffordshire. Each workshop features a presentation from Sir Muir Gray, who articulated the importance of leading physically, mentally and emotionally active lives in order to age well.

Over 160 people in total attended the workshops and participated in a variety of discussions. Feedback from the events highlighted the positive work already happening, however there was more to be done to create an environment for healthy ageing.

The specific feedback provided in the report would be used to inform the Healthy Ageing Plan.

Resolved – That the Board note the outputs from the Healthy Ageing workshop and the process and timescales to develop a draft Staffordshire Healthy Ageing action plan.

The Board received the Staffordshire Health and Wellbeing Board Forward Plan for 2023/2024 and were provided with an update on the items scheduled for future meetings.

Items for the September meeting were noted as follows:

-      Health in Early Life Priority Progress Update

-      Better Care Fund

-      Co-production: Healthwatch Update

-      JSNA Update

-      Healthy Ageing Priority Progress Update

Resolved – That the Forward Plan for 2023/24 be noted.