To present the final draft of the Joint Local Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2023-2033 to the Board for approval. To propose a plan for next steps and taking forward the strategy for implementation.

The Director of Public Health provided an overview of the strategy and highlighted some of the key retentions and changes from the draft. The principal points included:

1.     There has been a strengthening of the type of community that is envisioned for Herefordshire to be in ten years and elaborated on the four ambitions to do this.

2.     The strategy maintains the same principles that the board previously agreed on prevention and health inequalities.

3.     The strategy strikes the right balance between the two core priorities – ‘best start in life’ and ‘good mental wellbeing throughout life’ – and supporting priorities including wider determinants such as housing, economy, and the environment.

4.     A framework for delivery has been added towards the end of the strategy which sets out a systematic process that can be utilised to work in collaboration with communities to design the intervention.

5.     A set of indicators have been added which are aligned with the integrated care strategy in order to monitor change from some of the outcomes and priorities identified in the Health and Wellbeing strategy.

The Director of Public Health also noted that as part of next steps for the strategy is the development of action plans which will be delegated to different partnership groups. One recommendation is that One Herefordshire owns the coordination oversight of the two core priorities. Additionally, ‘best start in life’ can be delivered through the Children and Young People Partnership and ‘good mental wellbeing throughout life’ can be supported by several groups including the Mental Health Collaborative and Adult Mental Health group. The intention therefore is to delegate those partnerships to develop those action plans and bring them back to the board in three-to-four months’ time.

Mary Knower (Public Health Programme Manager) acknowledged the incorporation of all the issues that the strategy covers and noted the future launching of the strategy at a formal event.

David Mehaffey praised the alignment of the strategy with the integrated care strategy. On the ‘best start to life’ it was asked whether there should be a broader time period as opposed to the five year period as stated in the strategy.

The Director of Public Health argued that the current five-year period should be retained because intervention within the first five years helps produce better longer-term outcomes.

Alan Dawson (Chief Strategy and Planning Officer) expressed his support for the strategy and noted that through the One Herefordshire partnership, a number of stakeholder organisations have come together to help co-design this work, both looking at the proposals around priorities and the outcome framework. The Wye Valley Trust have committed to include these priorities within the work plan of the One Herefordshire partnership which will form a key part of the Trust’s work over the next year. 

The Chair noted the challenges surrounding dental hygiene and how the strategy confronts this issue.

The Director of Public Health acknowledged the issue of dental hygiene as a priority that falls under the strategy’s ‘best start in life’ priority in terms of up-stream prevention. Access to services is a supporting priority in the strategy, especially as this came up as a matter of importance to people in the consultation phase of the strategy.

David Mehaffey pointed out that responsibility for commissioning dental services was transferred to the ICB from NHS England from the 1^st April. This means that the ICB now have more local control of dental services. A key priority of the ICB is to ensure that a fair share of allocation that was spent regionally before responsibility was transferred.

Stephen Brewster (Voluntary Community Sector) asked about the development of the action plans and the need to consider what the role of the voluntary sector in the delivery of those plans.

The Director of Public Health agreed that the voluntary sector need to be an equal partner and acknowledged that work needs to be done on how individual partnerships, tasked with delivering the strategy’s priorities, work with the voluntary community sector.

The recommendations were proposed, seconded, and approved unanimously.

Resolved:

a)    That the Health and Wellbeing Board endorse the Herefordshire Joint Local Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2023 – 2033.

b)    That the development of an action plan is delegated to the One Herefordshire Partnership and associated partnership groups to oversee, with a view to bringing the action plan back for agreement.

c)    The Board to note the alignment with the Integrated Care System (ICS) Strategy in terms of the broad ambitions and partnership approach to delivery.