Meeting documents

Cabinet is requested to NOTE the briefing.

Mr G Williams, Cabinet Member for Community Engagement and Public Health introduced the report and highlighted the following:

The Director of Public Health was a joint appointment with the NHS. 

The report set out the themed approach adopted by Buckinghamshire County Council had highlighted the outcomes against each theme; many of which were preventative measures.   

The key outcomes were based on engagement with children and young people in terms of their health and wellbeing needs.  A visit to Pinewood Studios had been organised in which young people took part in several engagement activities.  The mental health element of public health continued to be a priority.  An Emotional Wellbeing conference had been held and highly attended by educational partners.

Mr Williams highlighted the following data from the report:

• 15/16 report- 12600 people had visited the Active Bucks website.  6500 people had engaged in activities from the website.  250 activities were available due to the extension of funding.
• 16/17 report- pregnancy in early years.  96 ½ % of face to face new born checks were completed within 14 days.  A focus had been placed on ensuring that the quality of the recorded information was of a high standard to ensure that each visit was impactful.
• 17/18 report - Healthy Places scheme.  It was useful to have a document to inform planning for the unitary council.  Social isolation was a key theme.  A two day workshop was held on social isolation which had been well attended and produced a series of actions. 

The Leader introduced Ms T Ironmonger, Assistant Director of Public Health who attended in place of Dr J O’Grady, Director of Public Health.  A discussion took place with Cabinet in which the following points were highlighted:

Problems within public health were usually of a complex nature and stakeholders played a key part in the resolution; the running of the service relied on a coalition of different partners.  A focus needed to be placed on reviewing the success of collaborations with different partners in previous years.  Cabinet were interested to see the Healthy Places plans to examine how health was promoted in the initial stages of planning. 

Ms Cranmer enquired as to what was being implemented to tackle the problem of social isolation.  Ms Ironmonger highlighted that there was a spectrum of social prescribing conversations.  The link workers were the social prescribers and there was a multi- agency social prescribing group with a commitment to take a more strategic view.  The process would be monitored and reviewed if required changes were identified.

Mr Chilver enquired as to how themes were chosen and if the was a process to find out what the priorities were for stakeholders and partners.  Ms Ironmonger stated that there was a choice of themes which were reflective of the findings of multiagency partnerships.   Ms Ironmonger also confirmed there were press releases in order to raise awareness of schemes for the general public. 

Cabinet reflected that it would be effective and beneficial to hold a public debate at a future full council meeting in order to raise public awareness.  Consistency and clarity of the available schemes would be beneficial for residents. 

RESOLVED:  Cabinet NOTED the report.