Agenda item
Public Health - priorities and progress
As a result of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, local authorities have new responsibilities for public health. This report outlines these responsibilities and how the Council is discharging these.
Minutes:
Dr Melanie Smith (Director of Public Health) introduced the report and explained that the priorities outlined had been drawn from her Annual Report for Public Health in Brent reported to Cabinet on 10 November 2014. Since writing the report, Dr Smith had to report on a very recent development with the announcement by the Treasury that £200M was to be cut from the public health budget. It was too early to know how this would impact on Brent.
Councillor Hirani (Lead Member for Adults, Health and Wellbeing) explained that the initial work in taking on the public health function had been to evaluate the contracts transferred over from the NHS and bring them under the Council’s procurement regime. The opportunity was now being taken to consider the delivery of the public health agenda across the Council and how various Council activities could improve public health.
The spread of funding had initially provided little flexibility to target local need. Dr Smith drew attention to the area of sexually transmitted infections where she felt the Council had been spending more than it needed and so, as explained in paragraphs 3.19/20 it had joined with other authorities to collaboratively negotiate contracts with a range of providers resulting in securing savings. In response to concern expressed that when joining with other authorities it might reduce the flexibility to target local need, Dr Smith explained that the London wide work and local services complemented each other.
In answer to questions from the committee, Dr Smith explained that public health messages about smoking were largely run nationally by Public Health England and the council focused on issues more specific to Brent. Councillor Hirani stated that the progress made on working jointly with schools was varied depending on the issue. He outlined some of the programs that were being run with schools and it was explained that messages were fed back to schools through the Headteachers forum which ensure they got back to all categories of schools. The increase in child obesity largely stemmed from it being too easy to eat poorly and not exercise. Mr Frederick (co-opted member) felt that messages needed to go out to parents rather than trying to stop children buying unhealthy food. It was explained that the healthy eating message went out to children’s centers and early years settings, as well as schools, and these places allowed more engagement with parents.
In response to a request from the public gallery it was agreed to consider including in the committee’s work programme an evaluation of the current school nurse service.
It was pointed out that the drug and alcohol service accounted for nearly one quarter of the local public health budget. It was explained that the service included the treatment aspect which made it expensive.
The committee noted the report and requested:
· that members of the committee be sent a copy of the financial return for public health expenditure made to the Department of Health
· that members of the committee be informed of how many people were offered and accepted a health check by GP practices
· a breakdown of the drugs and alcohol budgets with numbers of patients in treatment by type of treatment be provided to the committee
· a brief overview of the school nurse service and its effectiveness be considered for inclusion in the committee’s work programme.
Supporting documents: