Agenda item

The Board received a presentation by Lucy Robertshaw, Assistant Director of Darts, which provided an update on ‘Arts on Prescription in Doncaster’ and the various initiatives being undertaken to maximise the health and wellbeing benefits for Doncaster residents by encouraging them to participate in creative activities.

Lucy explained that there was evidence from clinicians to demonstrate that the Arts brought tangible health and wellbeing benefits, and could help people to keep well, aid recovery and support longer lives better lived.  The Arts could also help meet major challenges facing health and social care, ageing, long-term conditions, loneliness and mental health.  The Arts could also help save money in the health service and social care.

It was reported that the Arts and Health Project Board, whose membership included various health partners and other organisations such as Cast, Darts, Heritage Doncaster and Doncaster Council, had now been running for a year.  It was noted that Doncaster was at the forefront of this work, which was attracting local and national attention.  Lucy confirmed that the 4 priorities for 2019-21 were Mental Health, Dementia, Increasing Physical Activity and Loneliness and Social Isolation.

Lucy then summarised the funding secured in 2019-21 (£2.1m), and the various areas across the Borough where the different programmes of activity were taking place.  She outlined how these projects were being evaluated, and summarised the early results, which were showing that participants were feeling more connected and independent, and their wellbeing was improving in terms of satisfaction with life and anxiety/depression scores.  With regard to next steps, it was hoped that stronger connections with GP Practices could be established, and that the profile of this work could be raised.

Lucy concluded by explaining that the longer-term aspiration was to develop this work so that it moved from being a series of short term grant funded projects to a wider service that all GPs could refer people to, thus enabling it to reach thousands rather than hundreds of people.

During subsequent discussion, Board Members asked various questions and/or made observations, as follows:-

·                Dr David Crichton felt that it should not be the case that people had to visit their GP in the first instance in order to find out more about these activities and be referred to a programme.  Instead, he suggested that front desk staff in Practices had an important role to play in signposting people to these activities, where appropriate.

·                Dr Rupert Suckling stated that there was a need to give consideration as to how to make these Arts and Health initiatives more sustainable for when the grant funding ceased.  In reply to a query regarding the grant funding received, Duncan Robertshaw, Chief Executive of Darts, explained that the bulk of the funding came from national bodies such as Big Lottery and Arts Council England.  He stated that, by comparison, only a small amount of private sector funding had been received to date.  Duncan confirmed that Darts was fortunate to have strong fund raising teams, but he stressed that the challenge would be in rolling out this programme on a Borough-wide basis.

·                Duncan Robertshaw explained that while the Arts on Prescription programme was currently only focused on adults, there would be scope in future to refine the models and widen the activities to also target children and young people.

·                In terms of expanding this scheme and getting all GPs in the Borough on board, Dr David Crichton stressed that evaluation was a key factor from a commissioning perspective.  He explained that if there was evidence available which demonstrated the value of these pilots in terms of bringing tangible health and wellbeing benefits to people, then that would be the mechanism for developing this as a mainstream service in the future.

·                Steve Shore advised that Healthwatch Doncaster would be happy to help with regard to publicity and signposting people to these activities.

After Dr Rupert Suckling had suggested that the Arts and Health Project Board could be tasked with taking this work forward, with further updates being received by this Board at the appropriate time, it was

RESOLVED to:

(1)             note the content of the presentation and support the further development of arts and health in Doncaster; and

(2)             note that this work will be taken forward by the Arts and Health Project Board, with further updates being received by this Board at the appropriate time.