Agenda item

Report of Gail Quinton, Executive Director of People. Group Commander Ben Diamond, West Midlands Fire Service will report at the meeting

Ben Diamond, West Midlands Fire Service introduced the report of Gail Quinton, Executive Director of People which provided an update on progress with the Health and Wellbeing Strategy priority ‘Working together as a Marmot City to reduce health and wellbeing inequalities’.

The report referred to Coventry’s involvement with the Marmot programme which comprised partners working together to reduce health inequalities. Improvements to date included a reduction in the gap in male life expectancy; improvements in educational attainment, employment, and life satisfaction; and reductions in crime in priority locations. There was now a further three year commitment to Marmot, with priorities being to tackle inequalities disproportionally affecting young people and ensuring that all Coventry people, including vulnerable residents could benefit from ‘good growth’ which would bring jobs, housing and other benefits to the city.

Coventry’s Marmot City Partners had worked together to produce an action plan with indicators and targets for the next three years to achieve these priorities. The plan was based on the needs identified in the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment and feedback from stakeholders. The Board noted that it was a live document that would be revised and updated on a regular basis.

Ben Diamond highlighted the initial progress against a number of aims and actions, progress against the young people priority included an internal and external evaluation of Acting Early; the establishment of the Ambition Coventry programme; the submission of a bid to the ESIF Growth Fund to extend the Ambition programme; and extending the Early Intervention Service provided by Compass to cover primary age children as well as secondary schools. Progress against the ‘good growth’ priority included DWP working with primary care services to educate professionals and trial employment support in GP surgeries; the development of a social value toolkit; the Chamber of Commerce working with employers to recruit locally; and the roll out of the Workplace Wellbeing Charter. 

The report included detailed information on action plans, indicators, current baseline data and targets for the first, second and third years of the Marmot City programme relating to the two priorities. Data would be reported against programme indicators on a quarterly basis and against outcome indicators on an annual basis. It was noted that the Marmot Steering Group would meet once a quarter to receive updates from partners, discuss progress and identify areas for development and partnership working.

Members raised a number of issues arising from the update including:

·  Support for all the detailed work that had been undertaken

·  How feedback was to be secured from young people and how this would be taken into account in future actions

·  Clarification that publication of the JSNA and the Health and Wellbeing Strategy was being promoted and if the promotional material could be used in newsletters to inform those who took part in the JSNA call for evidence process or fed back in other ways, about the progress being made.

Further to Minute 66 of the previous meeting which concerned an update on the priority ‘Improving the Health and Well-being of Individuals with Multiple Complex Needs’, clarification was sought regarding the appointment of a representative from the private business sector to support the work of the Board. Discussion centred on whether it more appropriate for a representative to sit on the Health and Wellbeing Board, the Steering Group or the Multiple Complex Needs Board. The issue of inviting representatives from the Local Enterprise Partnership and the Coventry Chamber of Commerce to a future Board meeting was also raised as this would provide the opportunity to find out how their work reflected the priorities contained in the Health and Wellbeing Strategy. 

RESOLVED that:

(1) The progress to date be endorsed.

(2) The action plans, indicators and targets for 2016-2019 be approved.

(3) Agreement be given to receive further progress updates from the Marmot Steering Group every six months.

(4) Information used to promote the publication of the JSNA and the Health and Wellbeing Strategy to be sent to Ruth Light, Coventry Healthwatch.