Presented By:Claire McIver
Minutes:
The Board received a presentation from Claire McIver on the draft Joint Health and Wellbeing Board Strategy. An update was provided around the development of the strategy and consultation which had taken place between in January and February 2022. The findings and feedback gathered were demonstrated in the slides.
Across the consultation, which ran from 21 January 2022 to 20 February 2022, 227 responses were received from 219 individuals and 8 organisations. Early feedback from the Board led to some minor changes which simplified the ambition and vision.
The strategy is guided by the King’s Fund four pillars for population health, which aims to improve physical and mental health outcomes, promote wellbeing and reduce health inequalities across an entire population.
Before open consultation, early feedback from the Board resulted in a change to the priorities, moving from ‘reducing infant mortality’ to a broadened ‘health in early life’ priority, with reducing infant mortality defined as a key outcome.
An output from the consultation shows that 81% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the vision statement. Comments focused on poor access, loss of/limited services, a need for a cohesive approach to health improvement, and a suggestion that the vision should say “We will think health and wellbeing, in all that we do.”
For question 9, a relatively high number of responses were categorised in the miscellaneous/unrelated theme because some respondents had answered the question by stating what public bodies should be doing instead of what they could do to help and therefore had been excluded from the main themes.
A number of comments were received for Question 10, which was an open-ended question on what people felt needed to be focused on. Around half of all responses were themed around access to services, i.e. access to GPs, support with technology, accessibility of services, and how we organise ourselves.
Further comments in the consultation highlighted themes such as communication, organisational leadership, consideration of environmental factors, access to healthy eating, promotion and encouragement of fitness and exercise and access to services.
In summary, respondents broadly agreed with the vision outlined in the strategy, good mental health was seen as the top priority and key themes identified:
- Access in the community and to services
- How would we deliver the strategy and how would we know that it has succeeded?
- A desire to see better joined up working between services and improved partnership working
- Involvement and engagement with the public
- Improvement on communications and information
- Consideration of environmental factors
Next steps include an update to the strategy to incorporate feedback from the consultation, to share the final version with the Board in the following 2-3 weeks, sign-off from the Board at the June 2022 meeting, mapping of existing partnerships and workstreams to identify gaps and action plans and agree the process for monitoring progress. It was important that the next phase of mapping, identifying gaps and development of supporting plans and agreeing performance metrics/process was a shared exercise across Board members.
It was highlighted that a sponsor for each priority theme would be beneficial in the long term, who takes responsibility for ensuring actions are delivered, along with a lead organisation responsible for delivery.
Members of the Board suggested that an action plan be compiled once the strategy had been finalised and presented to the Staffordshire Leaders Board to seek a willing volunteer/organisation to take the work forward.
It was agreed to share the strategy with the Board and seek approval via email and a further update provided at the next Board meeting in June 2022.
RESOLVED – That the update be noted.