Agenda item

Report of Liz Gaulton, Director of Public Health and Wellbeing

The Board considered a report of Liz Gaulton, Director of Public Health and Wellbeing which provided an update on the process for refreshing the short-term priorities of the joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy.

The report indicated that the Council and the Clinical Commissioning Group had a statutory duty, through the Health and Wellbeing Board, to develop a Health and Wellbeing Strategy that set out how they would address the health and well-being needs of local residents, as identified in the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA). The aim of this Strategy was to develop a set of shared, evidence-based priorities for commissioning local services which would improve the public’s health and reduce inequalities. The outcomes of this work would help to determine what actions the Council, the NHS and other partners needed to take to meet health and social care needs, and to address the wider determinants that impacted on health and wellbeing. The current Health and Wellbeing Strategy was approved in 2019, following consultation and engagement with key stakeholders and members of the public.

The report detailed the three strategic ambitions of the current Strategy as follows:
(i) People are healthier and independent for longer

(ii) Children and young people fulfil their potential

(iii) People live in connected, safe and sustainable communities.

The current short term priorities were:

(i) Loneliness and social isolation

(ii) Young people’s mental health and well-being

(iii) Working differently with our communities.

As part of the development of the Health and Well-being Strategy, it had been agreed to review and refresh the short-term priorities every 12 to 18 months to ensure that these still reflected the key issues and challenges facing Coventry residents. The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the city and residents and the proposed changes within the health and social care system had further strengthened the need to refresh the Health and Well-being Strategy to ensure the priorities contained within it remained relevant.

The Board were informed that the starting point in developing the revised Strategy would be to look at the impact of the existing three priority areas, by using available data, including a number of assessments and the findings from the place-based JSNA, that had been completed over the last few months. A number of stakeholder workshops were planned to understand what the impact had been so far and prepare a light touch stocktake of key outcomes for each of the three priorities and recommended next steps, to inform the revised Strategy. Wider lessons learnt about the format and implementation of the Strategy within an evolving health and social care context would also be identified.

The Board had adopted the Kings Fund framework for population health as part of the Strategy. This framework still remained integral to the Strategy and it was not intended to change this approach to delivering the priorities.

The Board noted that a workshop for Health and Wellbeing Board members and other senior partners was being planned for the Autumn to understand how the population health framework had worked so far in Coventry and to review the value of the  existing activity and identifying gaps and priorities.

Regarding consultation, it was intended to use the recent extensive engagement activity and to carry out a light touch public consultation process on the strategy priorities. It was also intended to consult with the Council’s Health and Social Care Scrutiny Board (5). The timescales for the process were detailed.

RESOLVED that the proposed approach to refreshing the short term priorities of the joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy be endorsed.