Agenda item

In 2022, the board conducted an extensive exercise including co-design and public consultation and brought forward its 10-year Joint Local Health and Wellbeing Strategy; a revised action plan has now been produced.

This report asks the board to approve this action plan and agree to receiving regular progress updates at future meetings.

The report was presented by the Director of Public Health. He explained that this 2-year action plan constituted part of the overarching 10-year Health and Wellbeing strategy, and the focus which had been chosen was to bridge the gap in healthy life expectancy, and this could be measured in different ways, but deprivation was the most measurable metric.

He summarised the goals and fulfilment of these as well as the compassionate approach to discussing healthy weight. It was clarified that goal 5 should correctly read “Reverse the rise in the number of children and adults living with an unhealthy weight.”

He discussed action 10, which had been left open for discussion, and concerned social isolation; proposing that the board identify a particular group within the city that suffers from loneliness and social isolation more than others and focus on this for action 10. He suggested that adult and young carers might be an appropriate group for this.

The Chair asked the board to approve actions but also to delegate formulation to lead officers for action 10.

The Chair said that she had been concerned that limiting action 10 to a single group might risk omitting particular demographics, but that the scope of the proposed group of adult and young carers actually gave sufficient scope in terms of age groups.

The Corporate Director, Adults and Safeguarding noted that some of the previous metrics and measures were from an Adult Social Care survey concerning carers and those with social care needs. She suggested talking to carers and young carers to ascertain their thoughts, but ultimately for the board to commit to some very specific and measurable actions - we could therefore follow up in a year's time with evaluation of those actions.

The Chief Executive, York CVS suggested working specifically with young carers first and foremost as a cohort, because they can be hidden in plain sight and the schools don’t always pick them up.

The Manager, Healthwatch York further discussed young carers; suggesting this was a significant blind spot and the hospital has not routinely been asking whether young people had siblings or directing them to the centre for young carers. She said it was telling that only six young carers had been identified by schools in the recent survey, and that caring must be embedded in everything. She also discussed micro-caring as a career choice.

The Corporate Director, Adults and Safeguarding responded that micro-caring had come to her attention recently; there had been work around this in York in the past, but she cautioned that this sector was unregulated and dealt with potentially vulnerable people, and checks/registers in this area had not been available. She suggested that micro-provision may potentially be beneficial for befriending and low-level support advice.

The Manager, Healthwatch York also drew attention to the importance of dementia diagnosis, alcohol awareness and adults living to a healthy weight on the action plan, suggesting further work could be done in these areas considering the discussion on Core Connectors item and previous board discussions on these topics.

Cllr Webb suggested that schools may need support knowing what a carer looks like, and also when Council teams are contacting residents about areas such as housing or adult social care, they could take the opportunity to discuss caring.

Cllr Runciman suggested that loneliness was not linked solely to poverty, and other factors such as bereavement must also be considered. She also suggested that many carers may not think of themselves as carers in their everyday lives, and asking bluntly whether people are “carers” would not necessarily result in all carers self-identifying and responding.

The Chief Executive, York CVS spoke on Goal 6 – requesting to amend the wording to reflect embedding of the standards across the system in the avoidance of being misleading. The Director of Public Health agreed to this.

The Board thereby

Resolved:             i. To approve the action plan and receive regular progress updates on the delivery of these actions.

ii. To delegate the identification of specific actions for Goal 10 to the lead officers for this goal.

Reason:               To ensure the HWBB is actively and effectively delivering on the vision and ambitions set out within the Joint Local Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2022-2032.