Agenda and draft minutes

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 urgent items of business.

There were no urgent items of business.

To approve as a correct record the minutes of the meeting of the Board held on 8 September 2021, and the extraordinary Board held on 8 November 2021.

The minutes of the meetings held on 8 September 2021 and 8 November 2021 were approved as a correct record.

There were no matters arising from the minutes.

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 applications for public participation.

To approve the Better Care Fund

Julia McDonald, Commissioning Manager presented the Better Care Fund.

The Health and Wellbeing Board had met in an extraordinary meeting on 8 November 2021 to discuss the draft version of the plan which had since been finalised and submitted to the Department for Health and Social Care. The Better Care Fund 2021/22 was now presented for retrospective sign off from the Health and Wellbeing Board, having been through consultation with key partners.

Board members thanked Julia for a comprehensive plan.

Following discussion it was RESOLVED that the Board approve the Better Care Fund Plan 2021/22 consistent of the Bracknell Forest Better Care Fund Narrative Plan 2021/22 (Annex 1) and Bracknell Forest Better Care Fund Planning Template 2021/22 (Annex 2).

To agree the next steps for the Health and Wellbeing Strategy

Heema Shukla, Consultant in Public Health presented the Health and Wellbeing Strategy.

Board members were asked to consider the wording for a vision for the strategy from two options. It was noted that some wording, such as health inequalities, may not be accessible to the general public. Board members also discussed the wording between ‘happy, healthy’ or ‘healthy, resilient’ in the two vision options and concluded that ‘happy’ was a more accessible and aspirational word than ‘resilient’.

Board members preferred the wording of Option B, with the word ‘happy’ instead of ‘resilient’.

Public health officers had done work on the cross-cutting themes of the strategy; HIAP approach, health environments, health inequalities, seamless care, and community development for mental health awareness.

The governance arrangements of the strategy would be reviewed.

Arising from discussion, the following points were noted:

·        Board members recognised that the introduction to the strategy included lots of context around COVID and local policy but agreed that this was important context for the strategy.

·        Board members were pleased to see the measurables in the strategy which the Board could monitor to ascertain the strategy’s success.

·        The strategy linked well to both the ICS strategy and the Council Plan themes.

·        The priorities in the strategy were clear and were clear on their engagement with all partners.

·        It was requested that the Strategy be brought back to the Board for final ratification after consultation, following some typographical amendments.

Following discussion, it was RESOLVED that

1                 The Board formally agreed the following vision for the HWB strategy;

Option B: Bracknell Forest is one of the healthiest place to live, work, study and play, providing our residents with the opportunities to be healthy, happy, and productive. We will support this by taking a health in all policy approach with a focus on promotion of health, prevention of ill-health and reduction in disparities in health outcomes between our communities

2                 The Board agreed the Draft Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy for public consultation (Appendix A)

3                 The Board agreed the consultation arrangements as set out in paragraph

To provide a briefing on proposals on population health management.

Bex Willans, Consultant in Public Health for the East Berkshire Public Health Hub presented on Population Health Management. It was noted that the project was an ICS-led piece of work, which Public Health were involved in. Bex suggested a further update be brought to a future meeting with a representative of the ICS Population Health Management development programme team.

Population Health Management allowed insight into areas of need, which could then be addressed through commissioned services. The Frimley ICS were leading on the Population Health Management programme across the system, to help senior leaders understand how Population Health Management could better address local health inequalities.

The Bracknell Forest geography was being used to test Population Health Management against a live project, the subject matter of which was yet to be agreed. The learning from test live projects would be discussed at system level.

The consultants leading on the project were currently working with NHS data only, and were hoping to connect Local Authority data and insight into the work.

Arising from discussions, the following points were noted:

·        The topics for the live projects had not been agreed, and the criteria was not known. Bex agreed to update partners once the criteria was clear. It was noted that the ambition was for an interprofessional group to explore the action learning sets for areas which would aid prevention and prevent health inequalities.

·        Bracknell Forest’s Public Health team would have input into what the priorities of the local work should be. 

·        Population health looked at the health outcomes and inequalities of a broad range of residents and patients to ascertain whether there were any additional risks for particular cohorts which could be addressed.

·        It was recognised that the work was a good opportunity for GPs to consider their registered population.

To provide an update on the Winter Plan.

It was agreed that a written update on the headlines of winter planning would be circulated by email.

To receive an update on the ICS.

Timothy Wheadon, Chief Executive of Bracknell Forest Council updated the Board on the ICS progress.

The ICS legislation was being processed through Parliament at the moment. In the meantime, Dr Priya Singh had been appointed as Chair of the Frimley ICS, and Fiona Edwards had been appointed as the Chief Executive. The new ICS structure would be more inclusive over a wider membership, with involvement from both unitary and county councils.

A workshop was planned in December to explore the plans for the ICS, and implementation was due in April 2022.

Timothy Wheadon advised that the Ofsted SEND Joint Targetted Area Inspection was in progress in Bracknell Forest this week and had taken significant resource from several partner agencies.

Andrew Hunter asked partners to circulate the Health and Wellbeing Strategy consultation to their networks when available.