Issue - meetings

To receive a report from the Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care and Public Health and the Director of Public Health, and to consider and endorse or make recommendations to the Cabinet Member on the proposed decision to extend the current contracts, set out in the report, to 30 September 2016.  This item will include a presentation on the Public Health Transformation programme.

Ms K Sharp, Head of Public Health Commissioning, was in attendance for this item.

1.         Ms Sharp introduced a series of slides about public health transformation, which had been included in the published meeting papers. She explained that the Cabinet Member was being asked to agree to extend current contracts to ensure that they all ended together, to accommodate easier and neater re-commissioning of services grouped together under the ‘Living Well’ and ‘Ageing Well’ headings.  Ms Sharp and Mr Scott-Clark responded to comments and questions from Members, as follows:-

a)            Members could look into how they could support public health initiatives in their local areas. Although public health campaigns encouraged people to live and eat healthily, and provided information about the health benefits of doing so, it was not possible to force them to make the necessary lifestyle changes. Mr Scott-Clark summarised the public health role as being to organise the efforts of society and Ms Sharp added that Members would be kept up to date with progress on campaigns and would be able to see what issues were current in their area of the county;

b)            the work undertaken on the strategy and in driving it forward was welcomed and the proposed contract extensions welcomed; and

c)            Public Health’s work with other directorates and partners was setting an excellent example of joint working, and allowed services to be more responsive to needs, especially in the field of early intervention. Kent could look at and learn from other local authorities which were shaping their services in the same way.  Mr Scott-Clark added that the main focus of the strategy was on where most change could be made, eg life expectancy, and on making the strategy holistic and as simple as possible.

2.         The Cabinet Member, Mr Gibbens, advised the Committee that a similar report would be made to the Children’s Social Care and Health Cabinet Committee on 22 July, concerned with the ‘Starting Well’ agenda of children’s health issues.

3.         RESOLVED that:-

a)    the planned public health interventions be noted; and

b)      the decision proposed to be taken by the Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care and Public Health, to extend the current contracts for Smoking Cessation, Health Checks, Health Trainers and Healthy Weight services to run until 30^th September 2016, be endorsed.