Chairman/Michael Holmes to report
Minutes:
The Chairman referred to the original intention of holding a ½ day development session on 13th February, 2015, for the Health and Wellbeing Strategy refresh. However, an offer had been received for external facilitation by the Local Government Association of a more indepth look at the Strategy.
It was suggested that the ½ day session could bring all the workstreams together and review them in anticipation of the new Strategy.
Discussion ensued with the following issues raised:-
- An opportunity to revisit the objectives and strengthen the support for children
- The original intention had been for the 13th February session to discuss a 1 vision for Rotherham and how to maximise the Strategy
- The ½ day session could be used to look back on the success/challenges faced by the Board during its first couple of years of operation as well as identifying what future challenges it faced
- The proposed facilitator had worked with many authorities across the country
- The 4 days facilitation would involve meeting with some Board members to get a feeling of where things had been, how the Board had been operating, clarity about the process and return at a later date to help to flesh out the Strategy and how the Board wanted to operate in the future.
- The Peer Review was suspended in September for 6 months due to the publication of the Alex Jay report. It had been the intention to use that resource to review the Strategy and there was a danger of duplication. Some of the preliminary work on the Review had already taken place
- A view was expressed that the Peer Review was about the system and not just the Board. The Board should use the Local Government Association (LGA) support to refresh the Strategy and the Peer Review used to look at how the system would operate to make the Strategy happen – the Peer Review should not take place until the Board understood where its business was going in the future
- The Rotherham Clinical Commissioning Group was of the view that the current delivery mechanisms were not fit for purpose and there was some urgency to the issue
- Both the LGA offer of facilitation and the Peer Review were real opportunities to be taken advantage of but they needed to be integrated
- National guidance that Health and Wellbeing Boards now had to operate to had been released but that could be subject to change dependent upon the outcome of the General Election
- Any refresh also had to take account of the forthcoming Corporate Governance Inspection report
Resolved:- (1) That, given the concerns raised, discussion take place with the Local Government Association regarding the Peer Review to clarify when this could be rescheduled for.
(2) That a separate meeting be held to agree how the peer review and separate Local Government Association facilitated support sessions could best be utilised to support Board and strategy development and strengthen governance.
(3) That Board members be notified of the outcome of (1) above.