Agenda and minutes

To be notified of the appointment of any Substitute Members

Pursuant to the Council’s Constitution, the appointment of the following substitute member was reported:-

Councillor J O’Shea for Councillor J Kirwin.

Councillor K Clark declared a non-registerable personal interest in item (5) Active North Tyneside Annual Report 2018-19 (CL1219), as she was a Director of and employed by Justice Prince (Community Interest Company).

Councillor J Cruddas declared a non-registerable personal interest in item (5) Active North Tyneside Annual Report 2018-19 (CL1219), as she was a Director of and employed by Justice Prince (Community Interest Company).

Resolved that the minutes of the previous meeting held on 30 July 2019 be confirmed and signed by the Chair.

To present the Active North Tyneside Annual Report 2018-19.

A report was received which introduced the Active North Tyneside Annual Report 2018-19 which was presented by officers from the Sport and Leisure service.

The purpose of Active North Tyneside was to improve the health and wellbeing of residents and reduce health inequalities across the borough. 

To do this, there were four key objectives:

i.          To increase levels of physical activity;

ii.         To increase healthy weight in adults and children across the borough;

iii.        To strengthen communities and support residents to support each other; and

iv.        To support people to improve their mental health.

Active North Tyneside aimed to tackle the health inequalities by specifically encouraging uptake in the 20% most deprived areas in the borough and also by directly targeting vulnerable groups, for example, young men and women who were not in education, employment or training, looked after children and troubled families.

Active North Tyneside was made up of a wide variety of different programmes, about 30 or so projects, some focussing on physical activity for all, some on targeted weight management intervention and some on recruiting volunteers to support and advise their own peers and communities to make healthier lifestyle choices.  All the programmes were FREE.  The programmes were funded by Public Health and delivered by the Authority’s sport and leisure service.

Since its inception in 2015, Active North Tyneside had delivered numerous community-based programmes and had worked with many external groups and organisations, all of which had supported the Authority in developing the Active North Tyneside programme.

The Annual report focused on the positive delivery of initiatives in the last year that had encouraged residents at risk of poor health to become more active, and highlighted areas of achievement as well some learning from those initiatives that had not been so successful. The sport and leisure service continued to work with Public Health colleagues alongside other groups and organisations to promote and develop the programme.

During the last 12 months the sport and leisure service had delivered a number of interventions to increase physical activity and maintain healthy weight.  The teams had healthy conversations on a daily basis covering lifestyle habits such as smoking, alcohol and getting more activity.  The teams was skilled in assessing customers’ readiness for change and giving them the right advice to support this.  There was also input from clinical staff, including public health nurses and a Dietitian. This brought a breadth of knowledge and experience to the team, and experience and ensured that all the interventions were evidence-based.

One of the objectives of Active North Tyneside was to reduce health inequalities and target those most in need.  The service also provided a number of offers to target groups including Looked After Children, Troubled Families, Young Carers and Foster Carers.  These offers were generally for free or greatly reduced cost activities across the sport and leisure service.  There was also a programme of activities specifically for disabled customers included swimming, trampolining and archery.  Although not directly funded through the programme, these offers  ...  view the full minutes text for item C&L10/19

To present the Bookstart Partnerhip Agreement 2019-22 and the delivery of the programme in North Tyneside.

A report was which introduced the Bookstart Partnership Agreement 2019-22 and the delivery of the programme in North Tyneside which was presented by officers from Cultural services.

Members were presented with an overview of the programme and an assessment of the likely impact upon and benefits for North Tyneside.  

Bookstart was the world’s first national book gifting programme, established in 1992.  It was run by BookTrust, the largest reading charity in the UK. Bookstart gifts free books to every child at two key stages; 0-12 months and 3-4 years of age. It also gave additional support to targeted families, multilingual children and those with additional needs. Every year over 2.2 million books were gifted nationally. 

Bookstart aimed to promote and encourage families to share books, stories and rhymes at the earliest possible age.  It was based on the premise that children who had an early introduction to books, and were read to every day, benefit educationally, culturally, socially and emotionally.

As a partnership between libraries, health and early year’s practitioners Bookstart would:

•           Ensure that every eligible child receives a Bookstart Baby pack by the age of 12 months and a Treasure gift by the time they are 4 years old;

•           Ensure that parents/carers receive a friendly and effective message which conveys the benefits and joys of sharing books, stories and rhymes daily;

•           Encourage families to join the library;

•           Encourage families to access and engage with local services;

•           Signpost and support parents and carers around their own

literacy/numeracy and IT needs.

In 2019, BookTrust introduced a three-year Partnership Agreement to give more security for the programme and support long term planning.  The Head of Environment, Housing and Leisure had signed off this agreement.   Bookstart Quality Standards, a framework that offered a benchmark for best practice, defined the objectives of the programme and how the measures of success would be met.

In North Tyneside the baby packs were ‘gifted’ by health visitors at the 6-8 week contact. The pack included two board books, a rhyme sheet and a booklet of tips and ideas for sharing books with children from a very young age. North Tyneside Libraries organise the delivery of the packs to the four health visitor bases and promote an awareness of the packs at the weekly Bookstart Rhymetime sessions held in libraries.

The Treasure envelope was gifted from Early Years or Childminder settings when a child was 3–4 years old.  The packs were delivered in November each year, over a three week period.  An additional resource was the newborn envelope, this was given out by health visitors and by staff registering births. It contained a booklet of black and white shapes to share with a new born baby and a congratulations card, giving information about the Bookstart packs.

Bookstart Corner was a targeted programme to support families that were either entitled to the free 2-year-old early education grant (around 670 in North Tyneside) or needed additional help to develop a love of stories, books and  ...  view the full minutes text for item C&L11/19