Agenda and draft minutes

RESOLVED that Councillor Birch be elected Chairman of the Health and Wellbeing Board for the municipal year 2022/23.

RESOLVED that Fiona Slevin-Brown be appointed Vice-chairman of the Health and Wellbeing Board for the municipal year 2022/23.

Members are asked to declare any disclosable pecuniary or affected interests in respect of any matter to be considered at this meeting.

Any Member with a Disclosable Pecuniary 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 Disclosable Pecuniary Interest is not entered on the register of Members interests the Monitoring Officer must be notified of the interest within 28 days.

Any Member with an affected Interest in a matter must disclose the interest to the meeting.  There is no requirement to withdraw from the meeting when the interest is only an affected interest, but the Monitoring Officer should be notified of the interest, if not previously notified of it, within 28 days of the meeting.

There were no declarations of interest.

There were no urgent items of business.

The minutes of the meeting held on 22 February 2022 were approved as a correct record.

There were no matters arising.

QUESTIONS: If you would like to ask a question you must arrive 15 minutes before the start of the meeting to provide the clerk with your name, address and the question you would like to ask. Alternatively, you can provide this information by email to the clerk at committee@bracknell-forest.gov.uk at least two hours ahead of a meeting. The subject matter of questions must relate to an item on the Board’s agenda for that particular meeting. The clerk can provide advice on this where requested.

PETITIONS: A petition must be submitted a minimum of seven working days before a Board meeting and must be given to the clerk by this deadline. There must be a minimum of ten signatures for a petition to be submitted to the Board. The subject matter of a petition must be about something that is within the Board’s responsibilities. This includes matters of interest to the Board as a key stakeholder in improving the health and wellbeing of communities.

There were no items submitted for public participation.

To review the Board’s Terms of Reference.

The Board was expecting announcements from the new NHS Integrated Care Systems (ICS) which may require changes to the Health and Wellbeing Board’s Terms of Reference (TOR). It was agreed to adopt the TOR as presented in the agenda reports pack with the knowledge that any legislative changes may result in an updated TOR being brought back to the Board for consideration.

Fiona Slevin-Brown, Frimley Clinical Commissioning Group, highlighted that paragraph 3.2 of the TOR referred to Bracknell and Ascot Clinical Commissioning Group but this needed to be amended to Frimley Clinical Commissioning Group.

RESOLVED to AGREE the Health and Wellbeing Board Terms of Reference with the amendment to paragraph 3.2.

Councillor Gibson, chair of the Health and Care Overview and Scrutiny Panel, presented the Panel’s review into mental health. The review focused on self-help and early intervention, looking at primary care and voluntary sector provision for adults. In Bracknell Forest, Talking Therapies was exceeding all four of the nationally set targets for treatment timescales and recovery.

The Panel were working towards eight recommendations, some of which were designed to support actions already identified in Bracknell Forest’s draft Health and Wellbeing strategy.

Councillor Birch noted the benefit of drawing together a joint review with partners and Board members.

To set out the results of the consultation, the amendments to the strategy in the light of the consultation and seek formal approval of the Health and Wellbeing Strategy.

Heema Shukla, Bracknell Forest Council (Public Health), and Andrew Hunter, Bracknell Forest Council (Place, Planning & Regeneration), presented the consultation on the results of the Health and Wellbeing Strategy.

The consultation took place in March 2022 and received 80 responses. 75% of respondents agreed with the strategy. It was felt that this was reflective of the work done with different groups to co-produce the strategy. The section relating to Covid has been re-written to reflect the changing focus of living with Covid rather than being in the midst of Covid. From the consultation, it was clear that there was a need to ensure that residents were aware of which services were the most appropriate to meet their needs.

In response to questions, the following points were noted:

·       Partners expressed concern in relation to the impact of long-Covid. Some residents were suffering from physical and emotional incapacitation despite being otherwise healthy, meaning that there was an additional cohort of people needing support who would not necessarily have accessed services before. It was anticipated that this could have a wider impact, for example, an increase in young people with caring responsibilities for their parents.

·       As a country there was still a lack of understanding as to the emerging long-term impact of Covid. However, long-Covid has now been defined and work has been going on nationally to estimate the proportion of people affected. In East Berkshire, Slough has started a pilot to understand local long-Covid numbers.

·       It was important to get the right support at the right time, and once patients have accessed clinical rehabilitation, they would need to move to community rehabilitation.

·       Residents have reported issues with clinical interventions being cancelled, significant delays in seeing a GP, and continued delays in accessing other health services such as Talking Therapies. There was an urgent need to tackle these problems.

RESOLVED to APPROVE the Bracknell Forest Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2022-2026.

To receive an update on the ICS development including progress towards vesting day, the composition of the ICP and ICB, and the role of place (including the Board’s role) in the ICS structure.

Sam Burrows, ICS programme director, presented the Frimley Health and Care ICS System Development.

The Health and Care Act 2022 has been passed meaning that the statutory reforms of the NHS and establishment of ICS has been made official. The changes were expected to formally come into effect from 1 July 2022 following the secondary legislation establishment order. Work would be ongoing beyond 1 July to further develop how the ICS can work effectively in partnership with other bodies.

Sam Burrows highlighted the Integration White Paper which has set out new concepts around how places can work effectively together as parts of systems and smaller localities. The Paper detailed a large number of new ideas including accountability, managing money between different statutory bodies, and how to best utilise digital infrastructure and workforce.

In response to questions, the following points were noted:

·       Partners discussed the role of Health and Wellbeing Boards alongside the various Boards of the ICS. There needed to be shared accountability between different systems and a focus on working together.

·       The new legislation had created a strong role for Health and Wellbeing Boards, and it was important for the Integrated Care Partnership (ICP) to avoid duplicating work done by Health and Wellbeing Boards. This was a more complex issue within Frimley where there were five Health and Wellbeing Boards, and Frimley ICP were looking to develop a strategy taking that into account.

·       Partners noted that local elements were working well together, and that local partnerships had the links to the community that ICPs could never have.

East Berkshire Public Health

Stuart Lines, Director of East Berkshire Public Health, reported that work was progressing looking at how the shared team was working across the three Local Authorities (LAs) and clarifying the relationships between the LAs, the ICS, and partners in Berkshire West. Work was ongoing to deliver the living well and starting well priorities linked to the Health and Wellbeing strategy.

Partners noted that Bracknell Forest had led the way in establishing a community map and expressed that this was a model that could be shared with other LAs in East Berkshire.

Adult’s and Children’s Social Care

Grainne Siggins, Director of Bracknell Forest Council’s People Directorate, highlighted that demand over the four-day Bank Holiday did not put the service under as much strain as expected; however, the Emergency Duty Service for the six boroughs was very busy across Adult’s and Children’s Social Care, particularly around mental health. The service has seen a significant increase in mental health activity out of hours.

Work was progressing in terms of preparing for the Adult Social Care assurance process which would be starting next April. The guidance had not yet been received but the service was preparing as best as it could without the guidance. It was hoped that partners could share their experience of what reviews have looked like.

Following the joint Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) inspection last year, the written statement of action was being submitted today. Children’s Social Care had also received notification of an Ofsted inspection.

Skimped Hill Health Centre

Fiona Slevin-Brown, Frimley CCG, updated on the Skimped Hill Health Centre. The team had had its last action learning set for the population health management programme and Fiona thanked Heema and colleagues who had been engaged in supporting that work. As part of that, there had been some analysis focusing on young people aged 18-25 where they had seen an increase in presentation of anxiety and depression. There had been collaboration across health and social care looking at interventions and engaging with the young people themselves.

Heathlands

Fiona presented an update on the new Heathlands facility which opened at the end of March. It has been real success and there has been fantastic feedback from residents from both the dementia care and intermediate care parts of the unit. The length of stay at the unit was around eight days. Heathlands was established as a partnership project across health and social care. Councillor Birch added that the facility was officially opened by HRH The Duke of Gloucester on 17 May 2022.

Town Centre development

Fiona advised that, as part of the wider estate strategy for the ICS, bids have been submitted to establish integrated care hubs and to address some of the estate challenges. This included some plans for development in the Town Centre. As the plans were still in the early stages, Fiona would bring more information at a future meeting of the Board. (Action: Fiona Slevin-Brown)

The Ark

Philip Bell updated that The Ark  ...  view the full minutes text for item 63.