Agenda item

The Health & Social Care Sub-Committee is asked to

1.    Note the information provided on the refreshed Health & Care Plan.

2.    Ensure that there is an understanding amongst the Sub-Committee of the context in which the Plan is being delivered and how it will impact upon the health and care landscape in the borough.

3.    Seek reassurance that the challenges to delivery have been identified, along with appropriate mitigation to manage these challenges.

4.    Seek reassurance that there is commitment across the partnership to enable the delivery of the refreshed Plan for the benefit of the residents of Croydon.

The Sub-Committee considered an update on the process to refresh the Health and Care Plan. During the introduction to this item it was highlighted that the original plan had been the product of good collaborative working between health and social care partners in Croydon. The Government had requested that the plans be refreshed following the pandemic to aid the recovery of services and to reduce health inequalities.

The Health and Care Plan was a strategic document that enabled the One Croydon Alliance to bring forward system specific plans and to test these as a partnership to ensure that they were both affordable and deliverable. It was recognised that the engagement process would be ongoing as different aspects of the plan were developed.

Concern was raised about the relative lack of engagement to date in the refresh, which had been restricted due to the pandemic. As such, it was questioned whether the priorities would be informed by engagement going forward. It was advised that as the Plan was implemented, programme boards would be created to guide implementation, including ensuring the Plan met the needs of residents.

As the importance of tackling health inequalities in the borough had already been acknowledged under the previous item, it was questioned whether the refresh to the Health and Care Plan would lead to new ways of thinking on the issue. It was confirmed that there was a firm commitment amongst the partners to address health inequality in the borough, but the key challenge was delivering actual change. There had been successful pilots in the past, and it was important to learn from both these and success elsewhere to deliver change. It was agreed that tackling health inequality should be a key strand in the refreshed plan.

It was noted that the Scrutiny and Overview Committee had recently reviewed the Community Safety Strategy and during the process it became clear that the population of Croydon had changed significantly over the past twenty years, with a large transient population. It was questioned how health and social care could respond and adapt to address the changing needs of the population, who may not engage with statutory services in the same way. It was confirmed that there was a variety of services within health and social care working with under-served communities, such as the recent programme on vaccine take-up, using a hyper-localised approach that had been successful. An important part of this work was to build contacts with community, faith and youth leaders and engage with them to identify new ways of working. It was noted that Healthwatch England was working with NHS England to develop communications for hard to reach groups to help improve knowledge and access to services.

At the conclusion of this item the Chair thanked the officers for the update provided on the Health and Care Plans.

Conclusions

Following its discussion on this item, the Health & Social Care Sub-Committee reached the following conclusions:-

1.    The Sub-Committee welcomed the refresh of the Health and Care Plan and agreed it was an opportunity to rethink how health and social care worked together to address health inequality in the borough.

2.    The Sub-Committee welcomed reassurance that public engagement would be one of the drivers for the Health and Care Plan going forward.

3.    The Sub-Committee agreed that it would continue to feed into the refresh of the Health and Care Plan, as the process developed.