Agenda item

To provide the Health and Wellbeing Board with an update report of the Brent Children’s Trust (BCT) work programme covering the period between October 2020 and March 2021 and outlines the priority areas of focus for the BCT from April 2021 to March 2022.

Gail Tolley (Strategic Director Children and Young People, Brent Council) presented the report which provided an update on the work of the Brent Children’s Trust (BCT) over the past six months following the update provided to the Board in October 2020. The following key points were raised:

·         There had been 3 meetings since October 2020 which focused on family wellbeing centres, which had begun a soft implementation process from September 2020 and was beginning to pick up speed and resource.

·         The Trust had contributed to the Health and Wellbeing Board strategy update.

·         A number of health colleagues including Dr Ketana Halai (CCG) had presented a paper from the CCG on a number of areas relating to children’s mental health and wellbeing, and the Trust was working to make some links in clinical areas and wellbeing areas for children and young people in terms of work in schools.

·         Priorities for the coming year included children’s health and wellbeing, working on parents’ reluctance to take children to routine medical appointments during lockdown such as oral health appointments and immunisation, and childhood obesity. It was noted that reference would be made to healthy weight in childhood rather than obesity for the priority description. There would be a continued focus on special education needs and disability which was an area of joint accountability with Ofsted and CQC. Particularly the Trust were being alert to anything that may come out of any major national reviews as a result of the 2014 reforms that resulted in large increases in the number of Education Health and Care Plans (EHCPs). Children’s mental health and wellbeing would also be a priority and there was a transformation plan for CAMHS being worked on. The Integrated Disabled Children And Young People’s Service phase 2 would focus on integration with health colleagues but that had been paused from January 2021 due to the pandemic and would need revisiting. Transitions work, particularly around safeguarding, would be a priority, and young carers who it was expected would increase in population as a result of the pandemic. Gail Tolley advised that there was a large number of priorities, some of which built on work already being done, but there was also a need to be aware of any legislative changes that may come through in relation to children’s health and additional needs, and the Trust wanted to retain the flexibility to bring those in if needed.

Members of the Board highlighted that in response to Covid-19 from an acute perspective colleagues had seen far more presentations of children in crisis through A & E at Northwick Park, and queried whether there was any plan for data collection on the acuity of presentation of children in crisis and analysis of what was leading to that. Many were new presentations and it was queried whether a broader piece of work was being considered to identify the increased prevalence of these presentations. Gail Tolley advised that the section in the report in relation to children’s mental health and wellbeing was very much a summary, but some of the data in relation to the increase in presentations was included in the report and there had been discussions at the last meeting about how the Trust could get more upstream to support those children in communities through GPs and school settings. An invitation was extended to Simon Crawford (LNWUHT) to the next BCT meeting. Simon Crawford made an offer to pull together prevalence of data over the last 12 months. Sheik Auladin (CCG) added that there was a piece of work currently being undertaken at NWL ICS looking at a mental health task force. The work was time limited and looked at some of the issues raised regarding the number of young people and children presenting at A & E with complex needs. The task force was running on a weekly basis at the moment and Sheik Auladin was happy to share the outcome of the task force with Gail Tolley.

RESOLVED: To note the Brent Children’s Trust key priority areas for 2021/22.