Agenda and minutes

• Councillor Collymore
• Co-opted member Ms Rachelle Goldberg
• C-opted member Ms Jane Noy

Members are invited to declare at this stage of the meeting, the nature and existence of any relevant disclosable pecuniary or personal interests in the items on this agenda and to specify the item(s) to which they relate.

Personal interests were declared as follows:

• Councillor Sheth – Lead Governor of Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust
• Councillor Matin – employed by NHSE
• Councillor Ethapemi – spouse employed by NHS
• Councillor Rajan-Seelan – spouse employed by NHS
• Councillor Smith – employed at Royal Free Hospital

To hear any deputations received from members of the public in accordance with Standing Order 67.

There were no deputations received.

To approve the minutes of the previous meeting as a correct record.

The minutes of the meeting on 18 April 2023 were approved as an accurate record of the meeting.

There were no matters arising.

To receive an update on the work done to tackle health inequalities in Brent through the Brent Health Matters programme.

Councillor Neil Nerva (Cabinet Member for Public Health and Adult Social Care, Brent Council) introduced the item, highlighting that there was an awareness in Brent that there were significant inequalities in how people accessed care and their wider health determinants. The paper demonstrated a range of initiatives that had been put in place since the formation of Brent Health Matters (BHM) to tackle health inequalities in Brent. In particular, Councillor Nerva highlighted the section in the report detailing the factory interventions that had taken place in the workplace through Brent Health Matters’ outreach service, which visited workplaces directly where there were known health inequalities and people at risk. The report detailed some of the learning from those outreach sessions which had found instances of diabetes, heart disease and hypertension and highlighted the need for Brent to have a service that was accessible, informed by issues in the local community, and was able to drill down and work in geographical terms at a micro level to reach the people most in need. He highlighted that, within Brent, the partnership wanted to ensure universal coverage whilst also targeting NHS resources to those with the greatest need and difficulties in accessing mainstream services.

In continuing the introduction, Dr Melanie Smith (Director of Public Health, Brent Council) highlighted that there were 4 pillars to the strategic approach Brent was taking. She explained the term ‘proportionate universalism’, which meant that there needed to be both a universal and targeted offer, with that targeted offer developed with communities rather than done to them. The second pillar was recognising that there was a need to attend to the wider determinants of health, which she felt was exemplified by the work BHM had done in factories. Co-production formed the third pillar, where there was a need to listen and work with communities to understand and act. The final strand was accountability, with not only the traditional examination of differences of health status by age and sex, but explicit examination of how services were being experienced and accessed differentially according to a residents’ ethnicity, deprivation and disability. In relation to what she viewed as unique to Brent, she highlighted a combination of input from the local authority, local NHS, community organisations and the voluntary sector reaching out with a practical and clinical offer which other areas did not offer.

Robyn Doran (Director of Transformation, CNWL, and Brent ICP Director) explained that an important aspect of the programme, which was different to other areas, was that Brent Integrated Care Partnership (ICP) was employing people directly from the local community into teams. For example, Central and North West London University NHS Foundation Trust (CNWL) had a team of Community Connectors, of which 6 were employed directly from the community to reach those communities that it had not been good at reaching in the past. Brent Health Educators and the BHM team were also employed directly from the Brent community.

The Chair thanked officers for their introduction and invited comments and questions  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.

To receive an overview of local healthcare resource.

Councillor Neil Nerva (Cabinet Member for Public Health and Adult Social Care, Brent Council) introduced the report, which detailed how local health service resources were allocated. He highlighted that Brent NHS was now part of the Brent Integrated Care System (ICS) and that the formal statutory body for managing health resources was the NWL Integrated Care Board (ICB) within the ICS. He explained that the paper highlighted the challenges within the system regarding how Brent ensured community services were reaching people as early as possible and how that could be maximised, and that there was some equity in the way those services were delivered and the way residents experienced services across NWL. He highlighted that there were no colleagues from the ICS present at the meeting, and it may be a good opportunity for the Committee to invite colleagues from the ICS to a future meeting.

Tom Shakespeare (Managing Director, Brent ICP) continued the introduction, informing the Committee that the starting position in Brent was challenging both in terms of workforce and funding relative to other NWL boroughs. Having said that, there was positive news with the publication of the new National Workforce Strategy, which gave the ICP an opportunity to develop further work around that and the response locally. Brent ICP was using every opportunity to maximise workforce, such as establishing a training hub, which was an important foundation for primary care ensuring significant capacity across a range of professional levels. The ICP provider partners, Central London Community Healthcare (CLCH) and Central and North West London University NHS Foundation Trust (CNWL) had also been looking at a range of initiatives around recruitment and retention, including ‘golden hellos’.

Robyn Doran (Director of Transformation, CNWL, and Brent ICP Director) expanded on some of the work CNWL was doing on recruitment and retention. She highlighted that one of Brent’s challenges was that the NHS had an inner and outer London weighting in terms of NHS salaries, where inner London employees received approximately £2k more per year than outer London. Brent was classed as an outer London borough, compared to Kensington and Chelsea which was a neighbouring borough. This meant that if someone was working in Park Royal Hospital they would only have to move across to St Charles’ Hospital, less than 5 miles away, to receive the inner London weighting. The inner and outer London weighting formed part of the national pay award which Brent ICP found challenging due to the impact it had in Brent. CNWL had used ‘golden hellos’ in the past, giving newly recruited staff £5,000 upfront to bring them in, but had found this had not retained staff. For that reason, there had been a big focus on retention at CNWL, focused on training, further education and personal development plans for all staff members as well as ensuring staff felt valued. The NHS workforce strategy recommended apprenticeships, and CNWL was already doing some of that work, with Occupational Therapist, Nurse Associate and Social Work apprenticeships in Brent. In  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

The report updates Members on the Committee’s Work Programme for 2023/24.

The Committee noted the work programme.

To present the previous year’s scrutiny recommendations tracker to the Community and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee.

Councillor Matin proposed a recommendation in relation to the Community and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee meeting that took place on 25 January 2023 which looked at issues such as communications to residents around damp and mould. The recommendation being put forward was for all Brent Council communications that specifically focused on health, safety and wellbeing of residents to include an additional section or additional page to indicate the importance of the communication and how to seek support and help. The additional information should be in the top 5 recognised languages in Brent in large print and also braille to ensure all residents were able to access important communications. By way of clarity, Councillor Matin confirmed that this would only relate to communications that were sent in hard copy, and if the Council were able to identify specific residents that required those adapted communications then the accessible information could go to those households only.

The Committee considered the recommendation and the Chair led a vote on the issue. Following the vote, the recommendation was not carried.

Notice of items to be raised under this heading must be given in writing to the Head of Executive and Member Services or her representative before the meeting in accordance with Standing Order 60.

None.