Agenda item

Conor Burke (Chief Accountable Officer, Barking and Dagenham, Clinical Commissioning Group), Jacqui Van Rossum (Jacqui Van Rossum, Executive Director Integrated Care (London) and Transformation, NELFT ) and Dr Mohi (Chair - Barking and Dagenham Clinical Commissioning Group) all arrived during this item.

Ian Winter CBE, Care Act Programme Lead, gave a presentation on the prevention approach in reducing and delaying care and support needs in adults and the both Council’s and its partners’ plans to meet their responsibilities. 

Ian explained that whilst the document showed the key links to other strategies, it was not a strategy in itself but set out the links to other agencies and the community.  Ian explained that you can reduce the impact and sometimes delay the effect of conditions, but you cannot ultimately stop the condition progressing, be it dementia or other serious health conditions.  However, it was important to prevent and delay the need for hospital admissions and also to move away from the care homes mentality of sending residents to hospital on a Friday: especially in end of life situations as this was very distressing for both the individual and their families and put extra stress on the hospitals.

Ian drew the Boards attention to the Health and Wellbeing Board Development Session that was held on 16 April 2015 and the work covered during the session and the two guest speakers that had attended and their advice about making decision ‘personal’.

Ian explained that The Better Care Fund was one of the primary drivers of the prevention aims and that the Council’s priority ‘Enabling Social Responsibility’ applies across all its actions was a significant acceptance of the importance of individual and the greater community involvement.  This impacted on individual responsibility, in regards to what people could do for themselves and an individualised approach to each resident, for example what can family, friends neighbours, religious community and wider community do to help.  Then there was the support that organisation, such as the Council and NHS, could offer.  To meet the growing pressures it would become more important that larger organisations did not just focus on day-to-day care standards, but on what could be done to prevent escalation and that needed both innovation and a cultural shift in attitude.

The Chair reinforced what Ian Winter had said and commented that it had been a struggle to get prevention delivered and it was now important to identify the ‘person’ and do what was necessary to provide the services that work for the person.  Conor Burke agreed that prevention was clearly the right thing to do and it was now about working out how we do it to reduce the impact on resources in the future.

Helen Jenner, Corporate Director of Children’s Services, commented on Appendix 2 and requested that a comment about challenging age discrimination should be included.

Having discussed and commented upon the proposals set out in the report and the Prevention Framework attached to the report.

The Board:

Noted the duties and responsibilities of the Council and its partners to help prevent, delay or reduce the likelihood of individuals developing increased needs for care and support as a whole Borough responsibility.

(ii)  Agreed the Prevention Framework, as set out in Appendix A to the report, and, in particular, agree the proposed next steps.

(iii)  Agreed that a comment about challenging age discrimination should be included.