Agenda item

To consider the report of the Chief Officer for Health Partnerships.

The report of the Chief Officer for Health Partnerships provided the Board with a brief update on the Health and Wellbeing strategy alongside the West Yorkshire Partnerships five-year strategy. The development of a joint forward plan will enable streamlining and delivery of the strategy.

The Chief Officer for Health Partnerships outlined the following information for the Leeds Health and Wellbeing Strategy:

·  A workshop on this topic had been held two weeks prior to the Board meeting with Board members. In addition, a series of engagement has been undertaken through numerous partnership groups covering partnership organisations, programme boards, Universities, workforce boards and political groups.

·  The economic challenges faced by the public, particularly the cost of living crisis had fed into the draft strategy and commentaries.

·  A discussion at the recent Adults Health and Active Lifestyles Scrutiny Board provided a distressing reality as to the challenges and imbalances in provision and access to health care in particular around dentistry. It is important the refreshed Strategy reflect the actual experience of people in Leeds.

·  Emerging evidence for the Age Friendly Strategy noted the potential health issues for older people and staffing issues within social care. This strategy is essential given Leeds has an aging population.

·  The draft strategy identified the need for broader inclusion to ensure expanded reach into care provision for refugees and asylum seekers and people with mental health problems or learning disabilities.

·  The strategy was noted to be at the draft stage and comments welcomed for officers to feedback.

The Associate Director of Strategy West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnerships provided the Board with a brief update on the refresh of the West Yorkshire Partnerships Five-Year Strategy:

·  Since the draft has been shared, positive feedback had been received from relevant partners including Directors of Adult Social Care and Public Health from across West Yorkshire.

·  Programmes across West Yorkshire will be clear on specific detail for the region.

·  The collaborative approach taken has enabled further organisational development of partnership work.

·  The Leeds Strategy demonstrated a good delivery model and operational planning will connect the strategies. 

·  A joint forward plan is expected to be developed by June 2023.

The Board discussed the following matters:

• The need to ensure that the Strategies reflect the experience of the public and the need to address inequalities being fundamental tenants.
• Plans should be aspirational to provide hope and encourage innovation and change, but also need to realistic of what the optimum service level can be given resource constraints and what is achievable.
• The changes in the demographics of Leeds, detailed at page 54 of the report, outlines the necessity for a robust Age Friendly Strategy and the intergenerational work with Child Friendly. It was confirmed that the draft strategy document will be brought to the next meeting of the Older People’s Forum.
• Language used in the strategies should be inclusive and accessible for all demographics.
• As future challenges to health and care systems have potential to worsen, conventional strategy plans may overcomplicate the situations if not coherent and collaborative across regions and institutions.
• The importance of good policy and practise for children’s mental health care provision was stressed as a priority.
• The language used in the documents should acknowledge the challenges faced by services.
• Clear action plans should be built from existing plans and supporting strategies without developing or overlaying additional action plans.

The Chief Officer for Health Partnerships thanked Members for their input, noting a greater focus was needed to link the approach with the draft Inclusive Growth Strategy refresh. They noted that the development of action plans against the draft 12 priorities as an activity flowing from the Strategy would build on existing city actions and should hopefully not be perceived as imposing more work or complexity. The increased reliance on robust and joint needs and outcome data will be utilised to develop better efficiency when applying the strategies to health and care systems.

RESOLVED –

 • That the updates on the refresh of the Leeds Health and Wellbeing Strategy, be noted.

• That the work that has been undertaken across the Partnership as part of the refresh of the Health and Wellbeing Strategy refresh and the West Yorkshire Strategy refresh, be noted.

•  That Members comments on the current draft of the West Yorkshire strategy, noting the further work to be undertaken and the development of a Joint Forward Plan to enable delivery of the strategy, be noted.