Issue - meetings

The Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care and Health, Councillor Worby, presented the joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy for 2015 - 2018, which also incorporated an Outcomes Framework and Delivery Plan. 

Councillor Worby explained that the Strategy was an overarching document which linked to a number of the Council’s and its partners’ strategies, including the Joint Better Care Fund work programme, the Children and Young People’s Plan and the Community Strategy 2013 - 2016.  The Strategy was developed based on evidence from the Borough’s Joint Strategic Needs Assessment and had the following high-level objectives:

Ø  Increase the life expectancy of people living in Barking and Dagenham;

Ø  Close the gap between the life expectancy in Barking and Dagenham with the London average; and

Ø  Improve health and social care outcomes through integrated services.

The key life stages were broken down within the Strategy to ensure that the needs of the different groups were individually assessed and appropriate actions identified.  Four strategic themes were established which focussed on:

·  Prevention: Supporting local people to make lifestyle choices at an individual level to positively improve the quality and length of their life and overall increase the health of the population. 

·  Protection:  Protecting local people from threats to their health and wellbeing. 

·  Improvement and Integration of Services: Improving treatment and care by benchmarking against best practice and known failure in care, as well as exploring new and different ways of providing accessible health and social care, with particular emphasis on older people and disabled children.

·  Personalisation: Ensuring that patients, service users and carers have control and choice over the shape of their care and support in all care settings.

Cabinet Members spoke in support of the Strategy and raised the following points:

a)  Co-location of Health Visitors within GP Practices and Children’s Centres by 2018 – Councillor Worby advised that responsibility for Health Visitors had transferred to the Council on 1 October 2015 which she hoped would enable co-location to be implemented prior to 2018.

b)  Decrease in the Under-18 Conception Rate by 50% (against 1998 baseline) by 2018 – Councillor Worby suggested that the target was challenging and would require a strong focus, particularly in view of some specific demographic issues relevant to Barking and Dagenham.  In that respect, Councillor Worby undertook to provide her Cabinet colleagues with a briefing document that she had received which illustrated, amongst other issues, the clustering of teenage conception and marriage between the ages of 16 to 19 years within the Borough.

c)  Improved Health Outcomes for Looked After Children, Care Leavers and Youth Offenders by 2018 – Councillor Worby acknowledged that some targets were not being achieved, including for those in the Council’s care, and a concerted effort was required to ensure that those groups were not disadvantaged.

Cabinet resolved to:

(i)  Endorse the Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy and its Delivery Plan, as set out at Appendices 1 and 2 respectively to the report; and

(ii)  Note that an  ...  view the full minutes text for item 54