Issue - meetings

A question and answer sessions on the 4 presentations ensued as follows:-

Was the culture of the Health and Wellbeing Board built upon principles of transparency, involvement, accountability, trust and respect between the Health and Wellbeing Board members?

There were a number of requests from a range of organisations wanting to join the Board.  However, there was a need for the membership to be focussed and ensure that the representatives were able to represent their organisations and act on their behalf as written into the Terms of Reference. 

There had to be wider engagement with the community as it would be one of the tests of success or failure as to how effective the engagement with communities was. 

There were good examples of work in the Health Inequalities Strategy and the 2 recent workshops had tried to be as inclusive as possible by inviting the wider representative groups rather than just Health and Wellbeing. 

With regard to the relationship with Scrutiny, Rotherham had been involved in various projects with the Centre for Public Scrutiny; looking at scrutiny within the context of the health reforms and how to develop successful working relationships.

How would the Board work together as well as with the people who actually used services to tackle difficult issues such as Service reconfiguration?  How could Scrutiny best support this?

Any Service changes, in accordance with procedure, had to be submitted to the Select Commission for comment. 

With regard to the required wider engagement activities, there was a need to use all the mechanisms in place such as the Foundation Trust network.   Rotherham had some very good engagement groups across the Local Authority and Health but there was duplication and a need to know what each partner was consulting on; communication was seen as key to ensuring this happens.

Do you feel Health and Wellbeing partners were able to identify potential conflicts straightaway and were there agreed ways of dealing with them?

Strong partnership working would help ensure that conflicts were easily dealt with, in an open and honest manor.

Having a comprehensive and jointly agreed Joint Strategic Needs Assessment and Health and Wellbeing Strategy would also ensure a common purpose and agreed goals, which should reduce any potential conflicts and issues between agencies.

A key message from the 2^nd Health and Wellbeing workshop had been the importance of a joined up approach on communications. 

What evidence was there that health and wellbeing partners worked well together outside of formal Board meetings?

The Joint Service Centres were an example where GPs and Council worked alongside but there was a need for further joint work as resources diminished.  This was critical to the transition of Public Health and protocols required.

Other good examples of good joint working included: learning disability services, mental health and the Early Help agenda with children and families.

There were concerns that joint working was not always as effective as it should be, issues such as not having co-located teams and IT systems that did  ...  view the full minutes text for item 66