Agenda item

Councillor Graham Jones welcomed Jo Hawthorne to the meeting, who would give a presentation to the Board on the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA). Jo Hawthorne reported that she was leading on the development of the JSNA and the new proposed model for Berkshire.

JSNAs became a strategic requirement in 2007 and one had first been introduced in West Berkshire in 2011/12. West Berkshire now had the opportunity to refresh and restyle their JSNA. . It was reported that the current document was not user friendly. It was clinically focused and in areas very complex.

The Vision for West Berkshire was to scope a JSNA that had the ability to:

•          Be accessible and web based

•          Provide relevant, easy to disseminate data

•          Tell the local story

•          Use Ward data as a tool to plan for localised services, and:

•          Provide key stakeholders with data for commissioning intentions.

Jo Hawthorne had viewed numerous examples of JSNAs around the country when undergoing her research and although she had viewed some excellent ones, many of these had been costly to produce. One particular style of JSNA which was very clear and user friendly was the Bedford Model. Jo Hawthorne encouraged Board Members to view the model online and feed their thoughts back to her. In her opinion the Bedford Model was excellent at portraying the local story to the reader, by listing the wards and then giving a snapshot of information which pertaining to areas including health and wellbeing, housing, children and young people and transport. The script was supported by data. Jo Hawthorne explained that she particularly liked that the Bedford Model focused on particular conditions such as sexual health, providing information on what the current situation was and what needed to happen next including links to the Health and Wellbeing Strategy.

Jo Hawthorne confirmed that agreement by the Board was required on the Vision for the new JSNA, so that she could move forward with the redesign process for Berkshire.

Dr Catherine Kelly asked whether the new version would allow data to be broken down by area so that each CCG in a sense could have their own JSNA. Jo Hawthorne confirmed that it was difficult to give an answer to this, as this was something the data team were currently working on. Dr Kelly stressed how important this was.

Councillor Graham Pask asked if the information could be broken down by ward and if this information was currently available. Jo Hawthorne confirmed that this was available for some data, however, added the caveat that the more data was broken down the less statistically reliable it became because of smaller numbers. Councillor Pask also stated that it was important to ensure there were links from the JSNA to relevant websites and to refrain from using too much jargon. Jo Hawthorne confirmed that language was a challenge and her team aimed to make it as user friendly as possible.

Rachael Wardell highlighted that this was an excellent opportunity to link the JSNA to West Berkshire Councils District Profile, which did contain information at ward level.

Rachael Wardell confirmed that she agreed with the Vision for JSNA. She had worked on the JSNA in other areas for a number of years and in her experience the final document had often departed from the original Vision, so this would need to be monitored.  Children and young people were often not adequately reflected in the JSNA and Rachael Wardell hoped that the new approach would prevent this from happening.

Jo Hawthorne reported that there was a workshop taking place on the 12^th June 2013 and it would be extremely helpful if Members of the West Berkshire Health and Wellbeing Board could attend it. The aim of the session would be to look at the Vision and the detail in terms of target audience.

Adrian Barker welcomed the idea of the JSNA becoming more accessible. He felt that there still needed to be a downloadable version despite it being web based. Jo Hawthorne confirmed that there would be downloadable summaries.

Councillor Graham Jones reiterated how important it was to be able to break the data down as this made it possible to compare the District with the rest of England.

RESOLVED that: The Health and Wellbeing Board approved the Vision for the JSNA.

Lesley Wyman briefly updated the Board on the Measles situation. The plan nationally was to focus on 10 – 15 year olds as this was the cohort with a lower immunisation rate, due to the MMR scare in the 1990s. Public Health England were leading on awareness raising activities and were using social media to do this. GPs were being encouraged to increase the number of immunisations in the 10 – 15 year old cohort.

Public Health England had identified those groups who were at high risk, including Looked After Children (LAC), Gypsy, Roma and Travellers and those in Boarding Schools. Letters were going out to local area teams to help ensure children and young people in these high risk groups were immunised. Health Workers would be working with Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities to raise awareness.

There had been no increase in outbreaks in England and the next set of data for Measles would be available on 30^th May 2013. There was no issue with vaccine availability.

Public Health were working closely with the area team, lead consultants and others within the Council to raise awareness in schools. Excellent liaison was taking place between both CCGs, Councils and Public Health England. This had highlighted the vital role of Public Health England in leading on awareness raising activities and ensuring the right information was communicated when required.

Councillor Pask questioned what the immunisation rate was in West Berkshire and Lesley Wyman confirmed it was 95% for the first dose and 92.8% for the four year old booster.

Finally Lesley Wyman reported that locally Public Health had now been situated within the Local Authority for seven weeks. A lot of work had taken place to build links with other departments and a detailed action plan was being developed on how Public Health would help to deliver the five priorities within the Health and Wellbeing Strategy.

An event took place on 16^th May 2013 that looked at the two priorities around supporting those over 40 to live a healthy lifestyle and promoting independence and supporting older people and those with Long term conditions to live within the community. The aim of this session was to build wider action plans which highlighted how areas were working together to deliver the priorities within the strategy.