Agenda item

To present new proposed commitments for the Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy for approval by the Health and Wellbeing Board.

Agnieszka Spruds (Strategy Lead – Policy, Brent Council) introduced the report, which provided a refresh of the Brent Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy. In introducing the report, she highlighted the following key points:

• The Board were reminded that a fundamental re-write of the Joint Health and Wellbeing Board had been agreed in October 2020 in the context of the issues exposed by the covid-19 pandemic. The Board had agreed at that time that the focus should be a whole systems approach to tackling health inequalities and the wider social determinants of health as exposed by covid-19. There was clear instruction that the strategy must be developed with strong involvement of communities.
• Following the Board’s agreement to re-write the strategy, an extensive 3-stage consultation had taken place which led to establishing five main priorities; healthy lives, healthy places, staying healthy, understanding, listening and improving, and healthy ways of working. In January 2024, the Board reaffirmed its commitment to those priorities and accepted the proposal to refresh the strategy. During that meeting, it was noted that the initial comments made had been narrative based, which was appropriate at the time, but the refresh would ensure that there were strong Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) alongside those priorities.
• In refreshing the strategy, officers had collaborated with ICP exec groups, Brent Children’s Trust, and Council Leadership Teams to collate new commitments. These new commitments included clear KPIs, a solid baseline for measurements and a clear focus on addressing health inequalities, with 49 diverse commitments all focused on tackling health inequalities and allocated to the themes approved by the Board.
• Officers highlighted the positive experience in preparing the strategy and refresh and hoped the Board shared their enthusiasm and endorsed publication of the Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy refresh.

The Chair then invited contributions from those present, with the following points raised:

• Robyn Doran (Director of Transformation, CNWL, and Brent ICP Director) endorsed the strategy as a Brent resident and as someone who had been part of the process. She confirmed to the Board that she recognised the dialogues the team had with stakeholders within the strategy and felt the refresh represented a more up to date picture of what Brent’s needs were now.
• The Board asked officers to include some of the health offer available for looked after children and care leavers within the strategy, which contributed to addressing health inequalities which were highlighted to be deep-rooted for many looked after children and care leavers.
• Board members asked about the link between housing insecurity and mental and physical health problems and whether the outreach work being done in hotels and temporary accommodation could be incorporated into the strategy. Rachel Crossley (Corporate Director Community Health and Wellbeing, Brent Council) detailed the work being done in relation to mental health and housing, which was one of the sub-groups within the Mental Health Executive Sub-Group of the Integrated Care Partnership (ICP). The group had been particularly focused on temporary accommodation, with a big focus on where it was believed people were inappropriately housed and had clear mental health needs. The biggest challenge in that space was finding the right types of accommodation, so the prevention and outreach work was key to that workstream. The group was also focused on those that were not necessarily going to be Care Act assessed and were therefore ineligible for mental health support but in crisis. It was agreed this work could be incorporated into the strategy. 
• In relation to the healthy places active travel section of the strategy refresh, the Board requested further details to be added in relation to school streets which had been successful and were intended to be expanded. Officers agreed to take that back to the service area to ask if there was any information that could be incorporated into the strategy that was measurable and achievable.

The Board noted that the next steps would be to publish the strategy, and officers would then look to update the Health and Wellbeing Board on the progress of the commitments annually. Members endorsed the commitments to ensure alignment across all relevant departments and stakeholders and RESOLVED to approve the strategy refresh for publication, subject to the additional information requested during the discussion.