Agenda item

To receive a presentation about the wider areas of joint working done to the local areas considering the New NHS Footprints from Paul Hanson, Chief Executive, North Tyneside Council, Mark Adams, Chief Officer, North Tyneside Clinical Commissioning Group.and Sir Jim Mackey, Chief Executive, Northumbria Healthcare NHS Trust.

The Chair introduced Mark Adams, Chief Officer of the North Tyneside Clinical Commissioning Group, Paul Hanson, Chief Executive of North Tyneside Council and Sir James Mackey, Chief Executive of Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust to present details of joint working in North Tyneside within the context of an Integrated Care System. She referred to the Board’s key role in ensuring that there is an integrated approach to the provision of health and social care services in the area and she envisaged that the information to be presented would assist the Board in setting its future work programme and determining its priorities.

Whilst health and social care services were under pressure it was recognised that a lot of people worked hard every day to serve and care for the people of North Tyneside, that some brilliant work existed but there were some things that could be better. 

The Integrated Care System (ICS) was described as a response by the NHS to collaborate across the North East and North Cumbria and for commissioners and providers to work together and differently to handle pressures on the system. Local government, social care and other public services did not fit easily into the ICS and so there had been discussions with relevant political leaders, Chief Executives and Health & Wellbeing Boards.

At a sub-regional level an Integrated Care Partnership (ICP) had brought together the relevant chief officers of the local authorities, CCGs and NHS Trusts serving Gateshead, Northumberland, Newcastle and North Tyneside to determine how collaboration could help deliver things that had not been done before.

In terms of clinical work, hospital providers were working together to relieve pressures in the system, recruit the best people, develop new services, share support services and formalise joint working arrangements through a Tyne Provider Alliance.

The Board were presented with details of how various preventative strategies were being delivered through joint working in the primary care sector and through secondary prevention. Priority was being given to smoking cessation across the ICS and reference was made to examples of collaboration relating to cardio vascular disease, falls, obesity, mental health and wellbeing and social prescribing.

There had been agreement to view health and wellbeing in its broadest sense. As all four local authorities had declared a climate emergency there had been a commitment to work together and to learn from each other in terms how we travel, how homes are heated, how businesses consume energy and the use of supply chains. It had also been recognised that employment was a key determinant of health and wellbeing and that there were opportunities to target the recruitment and training opportunities available within NHS organisations at those post codes and cohorts known to local authorities as being most in need.

In North Tyneside a place based transformation board had been established to develop and deliver local joint programmes of work relating to areas such as the Children and Young People’s Strategy, urgent and emergency care, mental health services, learning disabilities and autism and managing variations in services.

The joint working would be accountable to Health & Wellbeing Boards and a plan for the ICS and ICP would be prepared and a draft would be submitted to the Board in Spring 2020 for comment.

Following the presentation members of the Board asked a series of questions when consideration was given to a range of issues including:

a)    How people might be encouraged to aspire to work in the NHS and to remain employed within the area;

b)    The scope of preventative work with young people to reduce the rates of obesity and diabetes;

c)    The need to raise awareness and promote the scope, value and status of social care services; and

d)    The weaknesses in the national framework for developing the Integrated Care Systems, which had led to users viewing the process with suspicion, and the actions taken at a local level to take control of the process.

The Chair and the Elected Mayor both thanked the chief officers for attending the meeting, for presenting a clear and concise explanation of joint working in North Tyneside and for ensuring that public servants across all organisations are working together to meet the needs of the population.