Agenda item

To receive a report from the Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care and Public Health and the Director of Public Health, outlining current performance on key performance indicators of public health-commissioned services for children and young people, on which the committee is invited to comment.

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

1.            Ms Sharp introduced the report and highlighted that progress across the range of performance indicators had been mixed. Work to address the number of women smoking during pregnancy had necessarily had to become more creative, to tackle this difficult and complex area. A campaign called “What the Bump?” was currently running on Sheppey, with leaflets being circulated in locations such as nail bars. Research had shown that, if a pregnancy were unplanned, women may take longer to adjust their habits to accommodate the pregnancy.  Midwives and maternity services would shortly have a greater role to play in advising women during pregnancy, and the positive influence of this would hopefully be seen in future figures.  Ms Sharp and Mr Scott-Clark responded to comments and questions from Members, as follows:-

a)    in response to a question about how the UK compared to other countries in terms of breastfeeding rates, and what could be done to improve the UK’s rates, Mr Scott-Clark advised that there were two stages to the campaign to increase breastfeeding rates;initiation and continuation.  Work on these could be helped by closer working between public health and the NHS, and public health would urge more involvement by maternity services. In some European countries, eg Russia, to breastfeed was the norm;

b)    a factor in mothers’ views on breastfeeding was the speed at which new mothers were sent home from hospital after giving birth. Years ago, a hospital stay of several days would allow a mother to rest and recover from the birth, while encouragement and support were on hand to attempt and persevere with breastfeeding.  Many mothers gave up trying to breastfeed simply due to exhaustion and lack of sleep.  In addition, many women had to return to work as soon as possible after the birth and did not have the family support network that would once have been common.  All these were factors in a decision not to start, or not to persevere with, breastfeeding;

c)    in response to a query about smoking rates in Kent and nationally, and what could be done to address these, Ms Sharp explained that work to address this, and to increased engagement with expectant mothers, was ongoing. In a survey in Sheppey, 133 out of 510 expectant mothers had continued to smoke through their pregnancy. Two local schools had offered to run campaigns to address this issue, using material supplied to them by the County Council’s public health team, and local Members were also able to take part in promoting public health messages in their local communities.  Mr Scott-Clark added that NHS England had given £3m to CCGs in Thanet, Swale and South Kent Coastal to target smoking during pregnancy.  This could help to extend CO2  monitoring of expectant mothers, as this was not currently available universally.  The effectiveness of the ‘stop smoking’ message would depend in part on who was delivering it to mothers;

d)    in response to a question about childhood obesity pilot projects in Dover schools, Mr Scott-Clark undertook to put the speaker in touch with the colleague working on the projects;

e)    in response to a comment about the number of home visits completed within 14 days of birth, on which performance was mixed but for which figures did not seem low, Mr Scott-Clark advised that approximately 17,500 such visits were undertaken in Kent each year.  This presented a huge workload for Health Visitors, who needed to identify the needs of every family visited; and

f)     the Cabinet Member, Mr Gibbens, referred to the number of children being assessed as having excess weight in Year R and commented that, as those children were only just starting their school career, the excess weight had not been gained as a result of the school’s regime. The committee then discussed the value of establishing a policy to encourage all school children to run one mile a day, and the benefit to their physical fitness of those who were able to walk to school.  Some Members said that schools in their local area already had a policy of running one mile a day.  Mr Scott-Clark advised that, although there was much evidence of the value of daily physical activity for children, and the proven value of school sports clubs, the County Council could not impose a policy of any particular daily activity.  The Council could instead foster an environment of encouraging physical activity, and raise awareness of its value, and could support any school which wanted to establish such a policy or try a project.

2.            RESOLVED that the current performance and actions of public health- commissioned services, and the information set out in response to comments and questions, be noted.