Agenda item

Report of Valerie de Souza, Public Health Consultant

The Board considered a report of Valerie de Souza which provided an update on the Grapevine Community Capacity and Resilience project and the Moathouse Community Development Trust-Community Navigator project, which were co-funded by the Better Care Fund and Public Health and Insight. A copy of the independent evaluation of the project was set out at an appendix to the report.

The report indicated that since 2017 the two community organisations had been funded to work with individuals in a non-programmatic way with the aim of learning what worked to mobilise community assets to improve health and wellbeing and reduce demand. The work was taking place in the context of the Upscaling Prevention Programme.

The Grapevine Community Capacity and Resilience project sought to take practical steps to strengthen community-based action focussing on prevention and building stronger, self-sufficient communities. The project aimed to ensure that those who were vulnerable to ill-health or health inequalities were better supported to develop resilience and reduce the need for crisis-level services.  Funding was committed until March 2020. Approximately two hundred individuals a year had been reached through Grapevine activity through this project, all of whom either had long term health conditions or cared for those with long term health conditions.

The Moathouse Community Development Trust-Community Navigator aimed to develop a deep understanding of the local environment and community in order to gather intelligence and build connections from the ground up. It aimed to proactively reach out to vulnerable older people and identify system failures and opportunities to support positive outcomes for individuals. The report detailed the level of funding secured. To date support has been provided to 180 senior, vulnerable community residents (the cohort which the project focussed on) by providing holistic, whole-family support to these individuals. Moathouse had also engaged with over 600 children.

The report indicated that evaluation had shown that the community approaches taken by the two organisations were contributing to a number of deliverables of the Better Care Fund programmes, although measuring the scale of this contribution was challenging. These included improved joint working between health, social care and the community sector so health and resilience activities were more tailored to the local area, resulting in a greater co-ordination of activities and more efficient and effective use of resources; reduced hospital admissions and prevention or delay of re-entry to the health and social care system; reduced social isolation of people; connecting isolated and vulnerable individuals to activities that would increase their resilience; and improved quality and patient/service user satisfaction.

The report highlighted the key components demonstrated by the projects which would be needed to mobilise community assets and re-orientate formal services to produce better health and wellbeing outcomes for communities which included established and trusted infrastructure; skilled and experienced staff; building relationships which created meaningful connections, trust and a deep understanding of the community to develop sustainable networks; a holistic and asset-based approach; and equality of power, devolved decision making and mutual accountability.

Members outlined their support for the successful projects and the evidence that they had provided. There was an acknowledgement of the need to work differently with grass root voluntary and community groups in the city, to continue to develop a bigger network and build a stronger evidence base, taking account of how other organisations work in a variety of different ways. 

RESOLVED that:

(1) That the work and the findings so far be endorsed and the development of a systemwide approach to mobilising community assets to improve health and wellbeing and reduce demand be supported.

(2) Board members consider their organisation’s current relationship with the community and voluntary sector and how this might become more collaborative to unlock the support required to meaningfully embed prevention at scale.