Agenda item

This report sets out the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment for Medway for approval by the Committee prior to its consideration by the Cabinet. 

Discussion:

The Director of Public Health gave a presentation on the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) to set the context, key components and messages in the assessment. 

She referred to the involvement of the Health and Wellbeing Board in producing the JSNA, which took account of the three existing Outcomes Frameworks, NHS, Public Health and Adult Social Care (a further Outcomes Framework for Children was anticipated shortly) and set out the policy context, referring to the Marmot report on health inequalities and the Dilnot report on fairer funding for care.

She then explained that the Board had focussed on five key themes, which were:

1. Give every child a good start
2. Prevent early death and increase years of healthy life
3. Enable our older population to live independently and well
4. Improve physical and mental health and wellbeing
5. Reduce health inequalities

The next steps would be a stakeholder event organised by the Health and Wellbeing Board on Monday 2 July 2012 to produce a long list of priorities which would be distilled by the Health and Wellbeing Board into a shorter list.  The JSNA would be updated regularly but was now available online at

www.medwayjsna.info

The Director of Children and Adults emphasised that the JSNA was very much a whole picture of the health and social care needs of Medway residents.  She also responded to a query, relating to teenage pregnancy, about the emphasis in the current curriculum of relationship and sex education and stated that as the curriculum changes were implemented from 2013 it would be important for Members to champion the need for relationship/sex education to still be included as a component of the curriculum.

Concern was expressed at some of the findings in the JSNA in particular the fact that Medway residents could experience a shorter life expectancy and it would be very important to target resources against the needs to have the greatest impact. 

Concern was expressed that the financial implications paragraph in the report stated that there `may be financial implications’ and Members felt this was misleading as in their view there would definitely be financial implications.  The Democratic Services Officer responded to a question and stated that on 9 October 2012 the Committee would receive a report on the Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy, which would give the actions flowing from the JSNA and at that point the associated financial implications would be clearly set out. 

Discussion took place around concerns, raised by the representative from the Older People’s Partnership, about poor experiences from service users relating to services provided by Medway Community Healthcare in particular those connected to diabetes such as podiatry.  One of the concerns appeared to be that some people seemed no longer to be eligible for services and some were being asked to pay for services which had previously been provided free of charge.

It was stated that some older people had raised concerns with the Medway Community Healthcare Trust but their response was that their course of action would be to contact the Ombudsman.   Some other Members of the Committee had also received similar complaints and the question was asked as to what the best method would be for the Committee could investigate the matter.  A suggestion was made that an online survey could be set up to enable service users to mail in their concerns in relation to this topic.

The Democratic Services Officer advised that as an initial course of action a letter could go the Chief Executive of Medway Community Healthcare on behalf of the Committee to request a briefing on the topic of diabetes services and podiatry in particular to clarify the concerns raised.  Once this had been received she undertook to propose a way forward.

Discussion then took place regarding historical reasons for a shorter life expectancy in Medway and whether the health issues, which arose from working at Chatham Dockyard, had been taken into account in the statistics in the JSNA.  The Director of Public Health stated that while occupational exposure to certain substances could impact on life expectancy this was not specifically taken into account.

Those Members of the Committee attending the event on 2 July stated that they would reflect on the issues raised during the meeting at that event.

Decision: 

(a)   The comments of the Committee should be taken into account in the development of the Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy; and

(b)   The Democratic Services Officer undertook to request a briefing note from Medway Community Healthcare as suggested above.