Agenda item

The draft Task Group report considers the impact of social isolation and loneliness in Medway and makes a number of recommendations for actions that the Council and other organisations can take to reduce social isolation in Medway.

The Task Group hopes that the recommendations contained in the report will act as a catalyst to further tackling social isolation and loneliness in Medway and the negative impact that it has on health and wellbeing.

Discussion

The draft Task Group report highlighted key challenges and issues in Medway in relation to Social Isolation. The aims of the Task Group had included reviewing existing provision aimed at reducing Social Isolation both within the remit of the Council and amongst partner organisations and the community and voluntary sector. The Task Group had also considered national best practice guidance and how Medway could learn from it to further reduce isolation for residents. Evidence had been gathered from a wide range of people, including Council officers, other public sector organisations and a wide range of community and voluntary organisations. The Task Group had met with the then Minister for Loneliness to discuss the national perspective on social isolation as well as undertaking a best practice visit to Bracknell to see how lessons from work undertaken in that area could be applied in Medway.

The key findings of the Task Group were that significant work was already taking place across a range of organisations in Medway to reduce Social Isolation. Examples included activity within social care, libraries, adult education, commissioned services and arts activities. However, the 23 recommendations made by the report recognised that more could be done. One key theme was the need to raise awareness as partners were often not aware of what other organisations were doing to address social isolation. A recommendation had been made relating to how awareness raising could be improved, while another recommendation was that a public communications campaign should be undertaken. This would aim to raise awareness around the work of community organisations and partners in order to better support community connectedness, identify practical actions that could be taken and promote existing activity in a more co-ordinated way. The creation of officer and Member social isolation champions had also been recommended to help support awareness raising work with Councillors being seen, in their role as community leaders, as having a key role to play in raising awareness of social isolation. It had been recommended that this be highlighted as part of Member induction. Another recommendation was that more frontline staff should be trained to enable them to effectively signpost to sources of information and support.

The Task Group’s findings had also recognised the importance of social prescribing in reducing social isolation. This concept would see health professionals linking patients to workers who could look at a range of holistic non-medical needs, including isolation and signpost people to appropriate activities and further support as required. This work would also include the development of a directory of services.

Committee Members raised a number of questions which were responded to as follows:

Social Isolation Network and measuring impacts – A Member asked whether the Social Isolation Network would be sufficiently resourced to deliver the activity envisaged. It was also asked if the impact of reducing social isolation would be measured. Another Member asked what the current membership of the Network was and requested that a membership list be circulated to the Committee.

The Public Health Consultant said that the Government’s recently published Loneliness Strategy recognised that measuring the impact of loneliness and social isolation was challenging. The Government had recently released new metrics setting out how isolation could be measured and work would be undertaken to consider how this could be used locally. It was planned to include a social isolation question in a health survey due to be undertaken and to then benchmark levels locally. In relation to the Social Isolation Network, a range of Council departments and external organisations were currently represented. The membership would be refreshed with Committee Members being welcome to suggest potential new network members. Consideration would be given to providing information about the Network on the Council website. It was confirmed that a dedicated resource would be provided to support the Network.

Built in Isolation – A Member expressed concern that some new developments were causing isolation as there was limited opportunity for residents to interact due to the design and that projected increases in single occupancy would also be a contributory factor. The Director of Public Health advised that a new Assistant Director would be taking forward work in this area and that he would be working with them and with Planning to consider these issues and how to address them within the Local Plan.

People who do not want help – A Committee Member asked how people who did not want to receive any support would be approached, given that some of this group were amongst the most isolated. The Director of Public Health said that this was one of the reasons for the Task Group having chosen to investigate social isolation. There was not one specific answer to the question but it was necessary to first build a framework of support. The Council had made a bid for Intereg European funding. If successful, this would support the development of significant resources in relation to social prescribing. It was confirmed that the availability of this funding would not be affected by Brexit. Another Committee Member hoped that, once people saw neighbours benefitting from activities in relation to social isolation, it would encourage them to participate. One of the Task Group Members noted that the review had considered the challenge presented by those reluctant to accept support and that, although the Council and other organisations could encourage people to participate in activities, this was ultimately down to individual choice.

Monitoring of Implementation – It was confirmed that, subject to the report being agreed by Cabinet in January 2019, a six month progress update would be presented to the Committee, with the Committee having the option of requesting a further update after this.

Decision

The Committee considered the report and recommendations made by the Social Isolation Task Group, and agreed to recommend the report to Cabinet on 15 January 2019.