Agenda and minutes

To approve as a correct record the minutes of the meeting of the Special Health Overview and Scrutiny Panel held on 19 August 2013.

The minutes of the Panel held on 19 August 2013 were approved as a correct record and signed by the Chairman.

Matters Arising:

Minute 18: Heatherwood and Wexham Park Hospitals

The Panel queried whether the Care Quality Commission (CQC) should be invited to the Panel meeting on 7 January 2014 alongside the Heatherwood and Wexham Park NHS Trust to discuss progress with their action plan. It was noted that the CQC were planning an unannounced inspection at Wexham Park Hospital over the next 12 months. The Chairman agreed to give this further consideration and make a decision on whether to invite CQC to the next Panel meeting.

Members are requested to declare any Disclosable Pecuniary Interests and/or Affected Interests and the nature of those interests, including the existence and nature of the party whip, in respect of any matter to be considered at this meeting.

Any Member with a Disclosable Pecuniary Interest or an Affected Interest in a matter should withdraw from the meeting when the matter is under consideration and should notify the Democratic Services Officer in attendance that they are withdrawing as they have such an interest. If the Interest is not entered on the register of Members interests the Monitoring Officer must be notified of the interest within 28 days.

There were no declarations of interest.

Any other items which, pursuant to Section 100B(4)(b) of the Local Government Act 1972, the Chairman decides are urgent.

There were no items of urgent business.

To receive submissions from members of the public which have been submitted in advance in accordance with the Council’s Public Participation Scheme for Overview and Scrutiny.

There were no submissions from members of the public.

To discuss with representatives of Local Healthwatch their progress in fulfilling their role, with specific reference to:

• Engaging with NHS patients and
• Working arrangements with the Health O&S Panel, particularly on referrals and information on patients’ complaints.

The Chairman welcomed representatives from Healthwatch Bracknell Forest to the meeting, Chris Taylor and Clare Turner, who would be presenting to the Panel around their progress in fulfilling their role, with specific reference to engaging with NHS patients and working arrangements with the Health O&S Panel. Particularly on referrals and information on patients’ complaints.

Chris Taylor, Co-ordinator at Healthwatch Bracknell Forest made the following points:

• He stated that The Ark had been commissioned to provide the Healthwatch service. The Ark was part of a consortium of organisations. Healthwatch had been operational since 1 October 2013. They had produced a leaflet detailing their role and contact details. They saw their role as improving health and social care for local people and to hold care providers to account on behalf of the public. The leaflet also set out the Health O&S Panel’s role and how Healthwatch would work with the Panel.
• In terms of engaging with patients, their leaflet detailed all the ways in which Healthwatch could be contacted. Over the next three months they would be carrying out a large scale publicity exercise. They aimed to attend at least one public engagement each week to make sure that their presence was felt in all wards and neighbourhoods.
• They had met with the Chairman and the Head of Overview & Scrutiny and drafted a statement which set out how they would interact and work with the Health O&S Panel. They hoped to develop a close working relationship with the Panel.

Clare Turner stated that she worked for one of the consortium of organisations under The Ark, a charity called Kidz which provided play and leisure equipment for young children including disabled children. She had also worked in numerous positions within the community over her career. She had worked as a nursery nurse in Great Hollands as well as working in a number of children’s centres and running her own local pre-school. She felt that over the years she had gained a wealth of knowledge about local communities and particularly families and what concerned them and what was important to them.

The Chairman stated that he welcomed this wealth of experience and looked forward to building a working relationship with Healthwatch.

The Director of Adult Social Care, Health & Housing made the following points:

·         Healthwatch would cover social care and not just health. He suggested that Healthwatch may want to make representations to three of the Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Panels but to use the Health O&S Panel as their conduit for doing this.

·         He hoped to see a meaningful, open and trusting relationship develop with Healthwatch and for Healthwatch to become the organisation that represented the patient voice and the users of local health and social care services. He felt that one of the key strengths of The Ark were that they could call on numerous representative groups, as The Ark represented a consortium of organisations.

·         He stated that referrals should work both ways, there may be a piece of  ...  view the full minutes text for item 24.

To consider the parts of the Quarter 1 2013/14 (April to June) quarterly service report of the Adult Social Care, Housing and Health department relating to public health.

Please bring the previously circulated Quarterly Service Report to the meeting. Copies are available on request and attached to this agenda if viewed online.

The Panel were asked to consider the parts of the Quarter 1 2013/14 (April to June) quarterly service report (QSR) of the Adult Social Care, Housing and Health department relating to health. The Director of Adult Social Care, Health & Housing felt it was important that the Panel considered these performance reports in order to monitor the department’s performance in terms of health.

The Director of Adult Social Care, Health & Housing reported that it had been an important quarter; much of the department’s preparatory work around Public Health was now coming to fruition. He was genuinely pleased with the way this work was progressing; additional funding had been put into the budget for public health to pump prime opportunities beyond those projects handed over by the former Primary Care Trust. A good set of projects had been funded from across Council directorates.

He reported that there had been a drive by the Minister for Health to encourage integration work. £9.6bn nationally had been dedicated to promoting integration, it was noted that some of this comprised existing funding. Pioneer status was being offered to authorities that participated in this work. It had been agreed locally that pioneer status would not bring any additional benefits locally and so was not being pursued.

He also reported that some work had been undertaken by the department to identify frequent users of social care and NHS services and then the department had worked with health partners to ensure these individuals were getting the best and most efficient use of overall resources. This had provided a strong basis and platform for beginning the journey of working together with these service users.

The Director expressed that he was grateful to health partners for their comments on in reach services. In addition, the team that delivered in reach services had been nominated for the South West team of the year award. He and the team were delighted about this and he would be drafting some publicity on this. The Chairman congratulated the Director and his staff for their excellent work in this area on behalf of the Panel.

The Chairman observed that asthma was very prevalent in the area and asked what preventative work was being undertaken to tackle this.

The Director reported that priorities would shape preventative work, for example, it was already clear that smoking was responsible for the premature death of significant numbers of local people. The Public Health Consultant added that they would be attempting to achieve a seamless delivery of preventative work. This would involve working jointly with NHS partners and colleagues in social care to ensure priorities for preventative work was in all their work streams.

The Chairman asked if members should consult the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) for information about health in their wards.

The Public Health Consultant reported that the Public Health Survey would provide a first hand source of live data and would provide ward level data. The JSNA would take an interactive web based format and contributions would  ...  view the full minutes text for item 25.

To consider the current information from the NHS Choices website for the NHS Foundation Trusts providing most NHS services to Bracknell Forest residents.

The report before members invited them to consider the current information from the NHS Choices website, for the NHS Foundation Trusts providing most secondary NHS services to residents.

The Head of Overview and Scrutiny invited the Panel’s views on whether they would like to receive this information regularly at future meetings. This would provide a means of getting closer to the patient experience as encouraged by the Francis report. The NHS Choices website was regularly updated and provided a good high level summary of information.

The Panel agreed that some caution needed to be exercised around the information and careful attention given to the numbers of respondents for each indicator. The Panel also asked for further information around patient safety alerts; staff survey response rates, and Friends and Family test scores. The Panel also agreed it was important to understand the timeframe in which the information was gathered.

The Chairman agreed that caution needed to be exercised and that the Panel needed to become adept at considering this kind of data and forming a view.

To receive an update on the progress of the Panel’s working groups.

The Lead member for the Francis Report O&S Working Group reported that the work of this group was progressing well. The outcomes from the working group would be crucial in shaping the way O&S around health scrutiny was taken forward. The working group had undertaken some valuable work and this would be shared with the Panel. At their next meeting in the upcoming week, the group would be meeting with the Chief Executive of the Heatherwood & Wexham Park NHS Trust, Philippa Slinger.

To consider scheduled Executive Key and Non-Key Decisions relating to Health.

Panel members commented that the ‘Healthy Voices’ project had been hugely successful and had now been running for three years and it was hoped that funding could be secured for the project to continue. A bid had been submitted and partnership funding had already been secured from Lifelong learning, Adult Social Care and Public Health. If the bid was successful, funding would be secured which would be 3-4 times the amount put forward by partners. 

7 January 2014

7 January 2014.