Health and Wellbeing Board	16 July 2025
Report of the Chair of the York Health and Wellbeing Board

Chair’s report and updates

Summary

1. This paper is designed to summarise key issues and progress which has happened in between meetings of the Health and Wellbeing Board (HWBB), giving Board members a concise update on a broad range of relevant topics which would otherwise entail separate papers.

Key Updates for the Board

Adult Social Care

2. CQC visited York as part of the local authority assessment during week commencing 16th June. We are now awaiting the report.

Update from the Ageing Well Partnership

3. The Ageing Well Partnership has continued to meet every other month with topics covered this year including:

Ø Adult Social Care Strategy

Ø Health self-monitoring

Ø Dementia Strategy

Ø Age Friendly York – Impact Report

Ø Age Friendly York Handbook

Ø AFY Getting Out And About Domain – progress update

Ø Social Isolation

4. Dementia Strategy – Dementia Forward are the lead dementia provider in York. We have invited Jill Quinn CEO of Dementia Forward to be a member of the Ageing Well Partnership. We have agreed that Jill will lead on an update of the Dementia Strategy action plan with a theme for each meeting from the strategy, these include: preventing well; diagnosing well; living well; supporting well and dying well. The first agreed theme was diagnosing well with preventing well to follow in August.

5. Age Friendly York – is now on the second cycle of the Age Friendly York domains. This includes reviewing progress on the existing actions within each domain and refreshing the action points. The Your Home second cycle action points have been approved and the Getting Out and About action plan is progressing.

6. Social Isolation – We have had a presentation from Public Health on the recent social isolation figures. One of the priorities in the Health and Wellbeing Board’s Joint Local Health and Wellbeing Strategy is to “Reduce the proportion of adults who report feeling lonely from 25% to 20% of our population”. The data is now captured in a different way recording “adults that feel lonely often or always” rather than “adults that feel lonely often, always or some of the time”. As feeling lonely some of the time is not always a bad thing as it can stimulate action to socialise, we support the new way of presenting this data. With this new data York is performing well both regionally and against comparable locations.

Specialist Implications Officers

Not applicable

Wards Affected:

All

For further information please contact the author of the report

7. We have been working alongside universities within the Curiosity Partnership to better understand loneliness and social isolation and what this means in York. York University have been successful in attracting research receiving funding to take the next step which will explore the related concept of a Social Frailty. They plan to begin psychometric testing of a Social Frailty tool and measure in January across health and social care settings with older people. We are exploring the concept of linking in with the Frailty Hub as the primary group of residents in York

National and Local Updates

8. NHS 10 year plan: On 3^rd July the NHS 10 year plan was published, setting out the government’s strategy to shift care from hospital to community, from analogue to digital, and from sickness to prevention. The plan can be found here. At the Board meeting, members may wish to comment on the key aspects of the plan which are relevant for the York health and care system.

9. Visit of Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty: On 1^st July, the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Chris Whitty visited York to hear about health in the city. His visit included presentations from the public health team on air quality, prevention and support in the first 1001 days, smoking cessation and the Health Trainer service. He walked the city walls and discussed with CYC officers and members the city’s development plans and the York Central site, as well as our housing challenges and plans, and then visiting the Community Recovery Hub at Wellington Row, where he met members of the community to hear about their journey of recovery from drug and alcohol use, and the fantastic range of events and support that is available.

10.ADHD/Autism strategy: Partners, led by the Council and ICB, have been working on an all-age Autism and ADHD strategy for 9 months, and in May, the council’s Scrutiny Committee had presented the Autism / ADHD Health Needs Assessment (here) and the draft Autism / ADHD Strategy (here). The strategy is subject to further co production and consultation over the summer and will be adopted by the Council’s Executive in October, alongside the SEND and Alternative Provision Strategy.

11.School age flu vaccine uptake: York has seen a massive improvement in the uptake of the flu vaccine in school-aged children – from a lower than average uptake last year, we were among the top 4 local authorities for every age group and achieving 20% higher uptake than the England average in 2024/25.

12.Suicide Prevention Training: Death by suicide is the leading cause of death among young people aged 20 to 34 in the UK. We have an established suicide prevention programme in York with a long history of partnership working, and suicide prevention training has been commissioned by ICB and public health, delivered by Papyrus.

13.Smoking at Time of Delivery (SATOD): Data was released this week on Smoking at Time of Delivery for 2024/25, and shows that only 4.6% of women in York smoked at the time their baby was born – just 65 people. In 2020 this was 10.4% (167 people), and in the last 5 years we’ve focussed a lot of work on this area, introducing an incentive scheme, working closely with the hospital, training people on VBA, comms campaigns etc.

14.Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment: The Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment has been published for consultation ahead of full publication in the autumn.

Author:	Responsible for the report:
Compiled by Tracy Wallis Health and Wellbeing Partnerships Co-ordinator	Cllr Lucy Steels-Walshaw Executive Member for Health, Wellbeing and Adult Social Care
	Report Approved	Date

Specialist Implications Officers Not applicable
Wards Affected:	All	√
For further information please contact the author of the report