To receive a verbal update from the Interim Director of Public Health.

The Executive Member for Wellbeing informed the Committee that the Health and Wellbeing Board was a statutory board with a large remit. In order to manage this remit adequately the Board had created three sub groups. The three sub groups were focused upon different stages of the life course and were called; start well, work well and age well.  It was hoped that through this new design the Board would be able to engage better with the public and have a whole community approach.

The Interim Director of Public Health told the Committee that the legislation which created Health and Wellbeing Boards was not clear about the purpose of the Boards. Health and Wellbeing Boards were required to have a membership which included both Local government and CCG elements and had to create the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) and Health and Wellbeing strategy for their area but other than that it was for each area to decide the overall membership and role. In Trafford, the Board had chosen to focus upon healthy life expectancy. This was chosen because Trafford had large differences in healthy life expectancy between its deprived and affluent areas. The Interim Director of Public Health informed the Committee that Trafford were comparing the borough not just with GM but with Trafford’s statistical neighbours.

The Trafford Health and Wellbeing strategy, which was a document on two pages, had 5 key areas that if improved would have a positive impact upon healthy life expectancy. The five areas were; reducing alcohol consumption, reducing levels of smoking, improving mental health, increasing cancer screening, and reducing physical inactivity. The Committee were told that the majority of the work public health was involved in touched on both social care and health care. This meant that to make a difference the Council and CCG needed to utilise all aspects of their powers and influence to improve public health within Trafford.

Three sub groups look were set up in order to pick up areas of work which weren’t being addressed by the main meetings. It was hoped that the groups would complete pieces of task and finish work such as delivering the Trafford dementia strategy. In addition to this work the Health and Wellbeing Board were looking at using the partnerships teams of the Council and CCG to engage the public to try to work out how to make the healthier choices easier to make.

Following the update the Committee were given the opportunity to ask questions. A Committee Member asked how the groups would engage with hard to reach groups who don’t want to engage. The Interim Director of Public Health responded that one of the Councils Consultants in Public Health had previously done a piece of work which engaged with local women and asked them about why they weren’t going for smear tests. Through the interaction and subsequent actions that were taken Trafford managed to improve the rates of women attending smear tests to the best in GM from being the lowest. The plan was to use a similar approach of starting with making contact, listening to, and engaging the public amongst other hard to reach groups. 

The Chairman stated that the relationship between the Health and Wellbeing Board and the Committee was not as close as it could have been. The Chairman was aware that the Health and Wellbeing Board was the owner of the CQC action plan following the local system review and requested that the Committee receive regular updates on progress of that action plan. The Executive member for Wellbeing agreed to provide regular updates and stated that he felt the Health Scrutiny Committee was well placed to help increase the engagement with the population and look forward to working with the Committee in that regard. The Interim Director for Public Health added that the Health Scrutiny Committee should focus upon supporting Public Health and prevention across all services as that was vital to improving peoples’ health and reducing the strain on services. The Chairman affirmed that the Committee was ready to support public health and that there were a number of areas, e.g. school readiness, where both of Trafford’s Scrutiny Committees could help.

RESOLVED:

1)    That the update be noted.

2)    That the Committee is to receive regular updates from the Health and Wellbeing Board on the progress of the CQC action plan.

3)    That the Health Scrutiny Committee will support Public Health and Prevention within Trafford.