Health and Wellbeing Board: 5th June 2013
It is encouraging that the leaders of Nottinghamshire’s health and social care services are in tune with the national vision for co-ordinated care for all as outlined in the recent national publication ‘Integrated Care and Support – Our Shared Vision’* Almost all of the papers to this month’s Health and Wellbeing Board had a common theme – the improvement of services for patients, carers and service users through better integration of health and social care. So much so, that at the end of the meeting, when the priorities for the next Health and Wellbeing Strategy for Nottinghamshire was discussed, there was unanimous support for Integration being one of the key priorities.
We had a presentation about the blueprint for the Mid Notts Transformation Programme. Integration is the key theme for the changes that need to happen and the blueprint is the vision for how health and social care services will look across Mansfield and Ashfield and Newark and Sherwood over the next 3-5 years. A Citizen Board is already meeting to give a patient/carer/service user viewpoint to the Transformation and to help to plan the wider involvement of local people in developing the initiatives outlined in the plan. Healthwatch will be offering support to the partners to ensure that local people have a real opportunity to contribute and have their say.
A similar initiative to promote integration of services for frail older people is underway in the South of the County, including Nottingham City. The Strategy and Implementation Group for Nottingham South (SIGNS) has developed a shared set of principles and a shared campaign to improve care for frail older people in the area. There are three themes to the campaign – Support to Thrive, Choose to Admit and Transfer to Assess and the partners will be developing their proposals under these headings. This was followed by a presentation about loneliness amongst older people and the impact this has on their health and wellbeing. Age UK is co-ordinating a national campaign to end loneliness and the Health and Wellbeing Board was asked to support the roll out of the campaign in Nottinghamshire. This will involve mapping loneliness and implementing a range of initiatives to combat loneliness. The involvement of older people will be an important element of both these pieces of work and Healthwatch will be supporting this where possible.
Children and young people with disabilities and/or special educational needs were the topic of the next item. This included an update about the findings of the needs assessment carried out in 2012 and the development of integrated commissioning for children and young people with disabilities and/or special educational needs. The need for integration and co-ordination of health and social care for this group of children and young people was brought to life by a presentation from a parent who highlighted the number of agencies involved in her daughter’s care and the amount of time spent in attending appointments and co-ordinating the various care and support services. The Health and Wellbeing Board agreed to sign up to the Disabled Children’s Charter for Health and Wellbeing Boards.
Finally the Board discussed the plan for the development of the Health and Wellbeing Strategy for 2014-17. The draft strategy will be consulted on over the summer so that it can be considered at the Health and Wellbeing Board in September.
If you would like to view any of the papers from this Health and Wellbeing Board, these are available at http://www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/dms/Meetings.aspx.
Claire Grainger
Chief Executive
Joe Blogs 