Agenda item

The Board received a presentation by Laurie Mott, Senior Strategy and Performance Manager and Allan Wiltshire, Head of Policy Performance and Intelligence, which gave an update on the work carried out to date on the 2022 JSNA, the Work Plan and the enabling infrastructure.

In summarising the results of the first tranche of data from the 2021 Census, Laurie Mott explained that the Census was incredibly important to the Health and Wellbeing Board, as it provided a rich data set on the health, social and economic environment in Doncaster.  It was noted that a substantial amount of data was still to come and this would not be available until the end of the year or early next year, so a more detailed insight into the findings of the Census would be provided at a future meeting of the Board when the data was released.

Allan Wiltshire then presented the JSNA work plan for 2022-23 and highlighted the following key areas of work to be covered:-

• SEND (Special Educational Needs & Disabilities) – an investigation and equalities profile would be carried out in relation to children registered as SEND;
• ‘Core 20+5’ – this was an NHS framework looking at health inequalities for the most deprived communities nationally.  Joint analysis between the Council, ICB and NHS Health providers would look at the health inequalities and outcomes in 5 clinical areas;
• Adult Social Care Access and Inequalities – work would be undertaken in analysing data sets to look at inequalities in relation to Adult Social Care services;
• Census – further census data was due to be published later this year and this would inform a more detailed and up to date understanding of Doncaster’s population;
• Combatting Drugs Partnership – joint analysis would be carried out between the Council, local NHS bodies and South Yorkshire Police to inform the ‘Harm to Hope’ Strategy.  A local partnership board had been established to deliver this new national 10 year policy framework locally, and a needs assessment would be completed locally to inform a more detailed understanding of this area.

In noting that healthy life expectancy in women had fallen for the fourth year in a row to 56 years (down 5 years in 5 years), the Chair asked if this issue was included in the JSNA work plan as a priority area.  In reply, the officers explained that this could be added to the work plan, but that it would be ordinarily picked up in the outcomes framework.  The Board agreed that this decline needed to be examined in more detail as a priority in order to identify the reasons for this fall and possible measures to deal with it.  Dr Rupert Suckling added that the Health and Wellbeing Strategy did not currently have a specific gender focus and he felt that this was something to consider when the Strategy was refreshed.

Anthony Fitzgerald stated that there was a need to place healthy life expectancy at the forefront of our priorities and when refreshing plans and strategies, as there were significant variations across Doncaster and the trend was heading in the wrong direction.

Lucy Robertshaw highlighted that the average age of women taking part in the weekly Dance On sessions delivered by Darts was 79, and as part of this work, data had been collected in conjunction with Leeds University which included evidence of what engaged and motivated people to get active and participate in sessions like the Dance On programme, and she said this could be fed in to any work looking into healthy lives, particularly women’s life expectancy.  Lucy also felt it was important to remember that people with learning disabilities were likely to die 12 to 15 years earlier compared to the general population, so it was very important not to forget that cohort of people too in any studies.

Laurie Mott pointed out that many analytic resources at the Council and at what was formerly called Public Health England had been taken up with COVID related work during the pandemic and that, as a result, a large number of Indicators had not been updated over the past 3 years, so he advised that there could be more shocks in store in terms of Indicators that might have declined over this period in the absence of staff having the capacity to monitor them closely.

After the Board had discussed the need to raise staff awareness of the revitalised data observatory online resource, it was

RESOLVED:-

1)            To note the findings of the JSNA to date; and

2)            Subject to the above comments, to note the JSNA Work Plan.