To consider the findings of NHS Herefordshire CCG’s recent public engagement on transforming Community Health Services: “Let’s plan health and care in your community”

To identify the committee’s preferred approach to the programme as it progresses.

To enable the committee to fulfil its function to review and scrutinise the planning, provision and operation of health services (not reserved to the children and young people scrutiny committee) affecting Herefordshire, and to make  reports and recommendations on these matters.

The director of operations, NHS Herefordshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) introduced her report and reminded members that the CCG presented information on the engagement approach around developing community services to the committee on 23 August 2017. The approach had been adapted in response to the committee’s recommendations. Healthwatch had contributed to the work, by running some of the events and attending the public meetings.

A lot of information had been provided for the meeting, although it was structured for officers to guide through.

The deputy director of operations presented the report, drawing attention to the following:

·         the process of engagement commenced at the start of July, and ran through to the end of October. 

·         There had been inter-agency involvement between 2gether NHS Foundation Trust, Wye Valley NHS Trust and Herefordshire Council in facilitating the discussions.

·         The approach to engagement recognised the diversity and rurality of the county and sought to get to the depth of conversations at various locations including doctors’ surgeries and supermarkets.  It was intended to hear from people who did not tend to come to public events so social media were used.  All types of care experiences were heard and the process explored what healthcare looked like. Parish and town council were attended and an ongoing dialogue was established.

The findings from the engagement exercise and locality information were shown in appendices 2 and 3 and all information had been shared with participants.  The key areas of interest were summarised as:

·         barriers to accessing services, such as transport, and perceived barriers such as not wanting to be a burden on system.

·         overwhelming feedback for services not to rely on the internet. There was too much information so it was hard for people to filter out unhelpful information, and other people wanted to speak to someone to check their problem out.  

·         prevention was a key activity and it was important to recognise that the NHS was not a finite resource.

·         Addressing rurality and how to identify issues regarding frailty and mental health was part of the community resilience approach. 

The chairman noted that the 803 members of the public who participated amounted to 0.5% of population and represented a statistically limited representation of the county’s demographic. She particularly noted the deficit in responses from younger people and commented that the choice of venues was not user friendly.  It was acknowledged that this was a small number over a 3 month period, and experience showed that it was difficult to engage with the diversity of people who did not think the subject was relevant to them.  A range of venues were visited, including children’s centres and maternity clinics as well as making use of social media.  

A member commented that the flaw in the exercise was that people who were not users would not engage, and wondered where this approach originated from if it were a waste of time.  He commented further that some of the issues were not being taken seriously enough, such as population growth in  ...  view the full minutes text for item 24