Draft minutes

The following changes in Board Membership were announced:

1.  Councillor Hulme had replaced Councillor Akram

2.  Andrew Fraser had replaced Alan Adams

3.  Caroline Hutton had replaced Neil Dardis

The minutes were noted and would be agreed at the next formal meeting of the Board.

The SBC Associate Director People, Adults, provided a verbal update on ICS and Place.  He advised that:

·  A new chief executive and a new chair of the ICS had recently been appointed at Frimley. 

·  The integrated care system changes were on hold because health and care partners were having to focus on covid.

·  A new Frimley Integrated Care Board and Integrated Care Partnership were being set up.

·  Discussions were ongoing about how to move from a place-based approach to more of a partnership approach. Membership of the board and the partnership was yet to be confirmed, nevertheless, both he and the Vice Chair would work to ensure that Slough’s concerns and needs were well represented at both these fora.

·  The health and care bill that that would set these actions in motion was slightly delayed for a number of reasons, however, preparations would continue in the background.

·  The Chair of the Wellbeing Board had recently met with both the Chair of the ICS and the Chief Executive at Frimley Health.

The Vice Chair advised that:

·  The NHS was on level four alert nationally due to the Omicron outbreak. All NHS meetings had been shortened with the focus on covid and maintaining capacity.

·  The passing of the new Care Act had been delayed for a number of reasons.

·  The recently appointed Chair and Chief Executive intended to visit Slough and meet with the Board, partners, GPs etc.

·  Local facilities and resources had improved, particularly in primary care in Slough, with extended hours of functioning and significantly reduced waiting times.

·  There was a strong commitment from the four Primary Care Networks and clinical directors to ensure continued access.

The Vice Chair advised that he was the clinical lead for the starting well ambition at the ICS and that the group continued to develop and progress and was coordinating a range of activities across the ICS. It was working to fill any gaps and avoid any duplication of work.

The Principal Strategy & Policy Officer advised that:

·  The Children and Young People’s Partnership Board (CYPB) was in the process of completing a needs analysis and meanwhile Public Health were in the process of carrying out a 0-19 needs assessment. This would be discussed in further depth at future CYPB meetings. She was working to join up the 0-19 needs assessment with the Board’s needs analysis. The Children and Young People’s Plan would be presented at the next meeting of the CYPB and that SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) was now a standing item on its agenda. The Board’s December 2021 meeting had been postponed to the following week. A more detailed update regarding discussions at the Board’s forthcoming meeting and next steps would be sent via email to Wellbeing Board members.

The Chair advised that she had met with the Chief Executive and the Chair at Frimley and had discussed decision making and governance structures and Children and Young People’s space, among other things. A significant amount of work had been carried out on 0-5 age range, but the 5-19 age range required further work, focussing on pathways between children’s services and adults’ services.

A Member stated that she had concerns regarding the recent Ofsted inspection of the SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) service which was deemed as poor by the inspectors. The service was in the process of developing an action plan in response to the Ofsted report. SEND services should remain on the Board’s radar and it could contribute to progress in the form of improvements and outcomes for the service.

The Chair agreed that this topic fitted in well with the Wellbeing Board’s priorities and she hoped to see greater leadership from Children’s Services on the Wellbeing Board and its input into the children and young people’s Plan.

The Executive Place Managing Director stated that there was a need to focus more on CYP and SEND services.  The CQC and Ofsted inspection had highlighted a number of failings. However, the report had also identified areas of strength which were commended, for example, early years, youth justice and mental health support for children and young people.  This success needed to be replicated across all areas of the service. Recently she had had a productive meeting with head teachers to address some areas of the inspection report and produced a document to help to build on improvements.

The representative from Healthwatch advised that in setting its priorities for 2022, it would be launching a new initiative called Youthwatch, which was aimed at giving a voice to children and young people regarding their experiences of health & social care services in Slough.

The Principal Strategy & Policy Officer stated that this topic had also been discussed at CYPB and she would raise this at next Board meeting with a view to setting up something as many partners were keen to engage with this.

The Director of Children’s Services stated that he was keen to raise the profile and actions around CYP and their families.  His team was committed to improving outcomes for all CYP in Slough and welcomed the support of the Wellbeing Board in this. 

The Associate Director of People, Adults stated that the Wellbeing Board’s governance structures, goals, roles, responsibilities and the relationship between it and the sub groups would be discussed further with LGA colleagues the following week.

The Chair added that the Board should be taking strategic overview and ensuring work and discussions were not duplicated. 

The Executive Place Managing Director advised that:

·  The Integrated Health and Social Care Plan brought together all providers and commissioners and ambitions together.  Local meetings had focussed on how to measure the impacts of that work but were keen to avoid the use of traditional key performance indicators and preferred to focus on outcomes. The CCG had commissioned HACT (Housing Associations’ Charitable Trust) to undertake a key area of work focussing on communities and outcomes and the impact of the wider determinants of health.  HACT would facilitate a workshop regarding the Health and Care Plan and produce a set of measurable outcomes in relation to the integration work.

·  The service was currently dealing with system pressures and hoped to set a date for the workshop in February and would submit the outcomes framework to the March meeting of the Board.

The Interim service lead public health advised that the report had not been completed in time for the meeting due to pressures of the recent Omicron outbreak.  The report would be presented at the March meeting of the Board.

The Executive Place Managing Director reported that following the NHS response to the Safeguarding Adults’ review concerning the death three residents at Causton Park, a national review had been undertaken and set out a series of reviews that each of the ICSs were undertaking for all those with autism or mental health issues in a mental health in-patient setting.  The deadline for completion of the reviews was the end of January 2022.  The reviews would identify what support was being given and take forward any recommendations. The review had been commissioned by the CCG and carried out by a specialist review team.  The process to be followed recommended by NHS England was being used.

The SBC Associate Director stated that Slough had a good track record of supporting those with complex needs to remain in their living environment wherever possible and to return home following hospital discharge.

Chair stated that it was statutory responsibility of the Board to regularly review the PNA (Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment) and that future reports should be submitted on the correct report template.

The Associate Director People Adults undertook to verify when the PNA was last reviewed by the Board and provide a timetable for the final version of the PNA to be submitted to the Board.

The SBC Associate Director People, Adults advised that:

The equalities review had been commissioned by the Slough Safeguarding Leadership Group Partnership (SLG) to investigate whether any demographic groups were particularly vulnerable to exploitation, either as victims or perpetrators. The review had concluded that no groups were disproportionately affected by this.

The review had identified nineteen learning points and had acknowledged areas of strength within partnerships in Slough.  SLG had discussed the learning and agreed it was relevant to all statutory partnerships.  Rather than formulate an action plan, SLG had agreed to consider outcomes in four key theme areas as set out below:

·  Improvement of data collection - sharing and using it to identify concerns and take action.

·  Locality working and communication regarding common issues.

·  Learning and development in relation to equalities.

·  Addressing the specific recommendations.

The Wellbeing Board would lead on the themed areas and have discussions regarding inequalities and exploitation with communities.  Particular areas identified in the report included:

-engaging with the local Somali community

-the need to produce an engagement strategy with excluded communities and those at risk of exploitation

-developing a hyper-local communications strategy

-Supporting and further engaging with the Roma and Somali communities.

-Considering how to work in a micro way with each of the neighbourhoods to identify community concerns and risks.

The Chair stated that the community engagement strategy and the resetting strategy post-pandemic were key. Some issues would be picked up by the Safer Slough Partnership.  She asked how this work would integrate with the localities strategy.

The SBC Associate Director stated that the Board should steer the direction of travel.  The key theme areas would be included in discussions with communities, partners and the SBC Neighbourhood Manager.  He emphasised the importance of taking a consistent approach with all statutory partners. The Strategy and policy team at SBC would be included in the discussions. The Neighbourhood Manager would be requested to include an update regarding this as part of her update at the next Board meeting. The Strategy and Policy team were on board.

The Vice Chair stated that there needed to be closer working and partnership between schools, GPs and other services for children in relation to safeguarding matters and the Board had an influencing role play in this.

It was agreed that the outcomes and recommendations from the Equalities review should be used effectively to influence how staff were operating, in data gathering, the quality of that data and ensuring that the recommendations were integral to practice. Interconnectivity between the PCNs and schools was also crucial. 

The Director of Children’s Services stated that he would aim to put the topic on agenda of meetings of head teachers. 

Executive Place Managing Director advised that the CCG had identified additional funding to support the work of the localities team for a year.  Some of the funding would be used to bring together localities work with Primary Care Networks in a bid to achieve shared ambitions.

The Associate Director undertook to provide either an update report or a verbal update on the topic at the next Board meeting.

A member stated that the subject should be included on the agenda for the Schools forum meeting the following week with a view to undertaking joint working with them.

The Director of Children’s Services proposed that primary and secondary schools in areas of deprivation should be contacted in the first instance with the aim of extending this out to all Slough schools.  He asked the policy and Insight officer to contact the education and inclusion officer and liaise with the Vice Chair about the matter.

The Public Health Strategy Programme Manager stated that a number of related activities were already in place, for example, the use of commissioned work at schools e.g. physical activities, oral health, messaging about drugs and alcohol which was focussed on tier 1 prevention work. She added that schools should be encouraged to become more involved in this work.  School nurses and other practitioners should be contacted to help get schools on board.

The Principal Strategy & Policy Officer stated that the report set out whether the Wellbeing Strategy had a positive or negative impact on the ‘protected characteristics’. Any negative impact identified by Board would need to be logged on the template, which was included in the report and the Board would need to decide what action to take regarding the matter. However, no negative impacts had been identified to date.

She went on to suggest that in the interests of good practice, any actions that were identified as having a positive impact should also be logged. The Chair agreed it was important to celebrate this and share it with the Board and its sub groups as well as include it in the annual report and the strategy.

The Interim Service Lead Public Health  stated that the Eqia needed to be flexible enough to include Health and social inequalities, even though these were not protected characteristics. The Principal Strategy & Policy Officer undertook to include these measures in the Eqia going forward.

The Executive Place Managing Director asked whether the Council’s current financial situation would impact on Eqias being undertaken for decisions which would affect the most vulnerable communities in Slough.  The Chair advised that all Cabinet decisions required that an Eqia be undertaken as a matter of course. Any executive decisions impacting on services would also be informed by the results of the recent mass consultation of residents regarding proposed changes to Council services. 

The Vice Chair stated that there was detailed deprivation data relating to communities in Slough and pointed out that four of the sixteen Primary Care Networks within the ICS, with the highest deprivation deciles were located in Slough.

The SBC Associate Director undertook to discuss revising the Eqia to include social and health inequalities with the Council’s equalities officer.

The work programme was noted.

14 March 2022 at 5.00pm.