To approve Herefordshire’s Better Care Fund (BCF) plan 2021-22.

The board received a report concerning the Better Care Fund (BCF) 2021-22. It was introduced by Ewen Archibald (Interim Assistant Director All Ages Commissioning) and Adrian Griffiths (Business Partner) introduced the report. The principal points of the introduction included:

§  Unusual timings and timescales shortened the preparation time available to prepare the plan.

§  Herefordshire Council had satisfactorily met the key national conditions and metrics and the council continues to work with the CCG in fulfilling those conditions and metrics - ensuring that shared strategic objectives around integrated services are fulfilled.

§  An assurance that the plan was submitted on time for the approval process, but feedback from the submission was not anticipated until just before Christmas.

§  The requirement that the health and wellbeing board approve the plan so that it can be jointly agreed.

§  The overall plan was just over £23 million (£23,174,000).

§  The plan supports core social care and community health care services in Herefordshire, particularly around discharge facilitation and hospital discharge.

§  The plan supports significant services including:

o   £6 million towards the community health services provided by Wye Valley Trust.

o   £2 million for the Home First reablement service.

§  The plan supports operational social care discharge teams and some of the more complex social care teams and  was a funding stream that covered the crucial services where health and social care join up with each other.

Board members were invited to comment, the principal points included:

·        The board commended the BCF team on successful plan for the year and noted the programme as a working example of a collaborative partnership between the council and the NHS.

·        It was queried whether there were plans to move from a back end of the system integration to more of the front end, in terms of prevention. It was also queried whether there had been an update on previous discussions regarding looking at the front end of the system rather than discharges.

The Business Partner explained that this year’s plan introduces admission prevention with a metric that focuses on adding admissions prevention as a focus for BCF. These changes were currently low key, but the direction of travel was for upstream intervention and preventing admissions to acute beds to be more of a part of a BCF rather than just focusing on discharge.

·        The strategy was welcomed by the board.

The recommendation in the report was proposed and seconded and agreed unanimously.

RESOLVED:   That the Herefordshire Better Care Fund narrative plan and planning template 2021-22 (at appendix 2 to the report) be approved.