Agenda item

Councillor Wyatt, Cabinet Member for Health and Wellbeing, gave the following powerpoint presentation:-

What are Health and Welbeing Strategies

-        Sets the strategic priorities for collective action for the Health and Wellbeing Board to improve health and wellbeing of local people

-        Based on intelligence from the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment and other local knowledge

-        Supports Health and Wellbeing Boards to tackle the wider determinants of health and wellbeing – such as housing and education

-        Enables commissioners to plan and commission integrated services that met the needs of their whole local community

-        Service providers, commissioners and local voluntary and community organisations would all have an important role to play in identifying and acting upon local priorities

Why we need a Strategy

-        Health inequalities in Rotherham worse than England average

-        Deprivation higher than average and increasing

-        Evidence showed bigger impact on health for those living in deprivation

What People Told Us

-        Health Inequalities Summit 2011

-        Comprehensive consultation with local people – they told us

-        Families felt many challenges in their daily lives

-        People felt trapped in poverty

-        Young people had poor skills for life

-        Culture of dependency had become the norm

-        There were low aspirations across the Borough

-        Many felt discriminated against, isolated and unsafe

-        There was little common identity in Rotherham

-        There was hugely untapped resources in using the skills of local people to help others

The Big Issues

-        Joint Strategic Needs Assessment along with the outcomes of the summit had highlighted the ‘Big Issues’ that we would commit to tackle

-        These were divided into 4 life stages:

Starting Well (age 0-3)

Developing Well (age 4-24)

Living and Working Well (25-64)

Ageing Well (age 65+)

What we did

-        Engaged with a wide range of stakeholders

To agree the 5 ‘strategic’ priorities

To agree the intended outcomes for each priority area

Consider appropriate actions needed to achieve the outcomes

Our Priorities

-        Prevention and Early Intervention

-        Aspirations and Expectations

-        Dependence to Independence

-        Healthy Lifestyles

-        Long Term Conditions

-        Poverty

How we will do it

-        An agreed set of actions for the next 3 years that would bring about step changes to reduce health inequalities in Rotherham

-        Lead professionals for each strategic priority to be accountable for delivering actions

What Next

-        Strategy would be used to develop commissioning plans for all health and wellbeing partner agencies

-        Performance Management Framework would be in place to ensure the Strategy succeeded

-        Annual reviewing of the Strategy to ensure we stay on the right track

-        Getting feedback on the Strategy; its priorities and actions, as part of a wider consultation exercise

-        Responses would be sought through the website and a Voluntary Action Rotherham even on 24^th July

Discussion ensued on the presentation with the following comments made:-

-        Very difficult to change a person’s habits  - lifelong learning and life time engagement

-        Real challenge in saying it was a 3 year Strategy.  Behind every priority there would be action plans, ownership and other workstreams

-        Young people were leaving school with qualifications but unable to find work – had to match training to need

-        Life time Strategy

-        The importance of housing should be stressed – involvement with the current Housing Strategy consultation

-        High levels of depression and anxiety and stress related mental health issues

-        Understood the need in Year One to co-ordinate a planned shift of resources from high dependency services to early intervention and prevention but there needed to be a back up plan to ensure that no-one was lost during the transition

-        Discussion required on transport to get people to work

-        The Strategy and the 11 Deprived Areas would work closely together

-        Need to ensure the strategic partnerships and the issues were adopted in the document

-        Year One would be changing the culture of services and then in Year Two see Community Champions

-        Understanding of community assets was as much about people as well as services

Resolved:-  (1)  That the Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy and the process by which it had been developed be noted.

(2)  That the priorities and actions set out in the Strategy be supported.

(3)  That a progress report be submitted in 12 months.