Agenda item

(A period not exceeding 15 minutes for questions from members of the public.)

Mr Doug Wright referred to the Health and Social Care Joint Commissioning Management Board (JCMB), which was responsible to the Council’s Cabinet and Doncaster CCG’s Governing Board.  He stated that he had been asking for a long time for the meetings of the JCMB to be opened up to the public, and also for the minutes of the JCMB to be made more publicly accessible, in terms of them being submitted to the Council’s Cabinet in future for information.

Mr Wright also referred to the challenge of the South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw NHS (SYB) financial gap of £139.5M required by 2020/21 and asked when the relevant partner organisations would be providing the public with details of how they were going to achieve the required savings in order to bridge the funding gap.

In response, Dr David Crichton (DCCG) advised that the CCG’s governing body was due to consider the governance arrangements in relation to the JCMB at a meeting on 28 March 2019, including the question of public access to meetings in future, the outcome of which could be fed back to Mr Wright.

With regard to the issue of the funding gap, Dr Crichton explained that the individual organisations represented on the Health and Wellbeing Board did currently publish details of their respective spending plans, so this information was already in the public domain.  Kathryn Singh added that, as part of the Doncaster Plan, links were provided to the financial information referred to by Mr Wright, which was set out over the 7 areas of opportunity.

In thanking Mr Wright for his questions, the Chair confirmed that Mayor Ros Jones had previously acknowledged at Full Council the need to make the JCMB minutes more readily accessible, and on the question of the financial information, she suggested that there might be scope for partners to look at the possibility of presenting this in a more joined up way, so that it was easier for the public to find the information.

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Mr Tim Brown addressed the Board as follows:-

“Thank you Chair for giving me the opportunity to speak at this meeting.

Paraphrasing Dr Martin Luther King:

I had a dream that our children, including children from black and African Caribbean communities will one day live in a place like Doncaster where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.

Chair, my dream of a fair Doncaster Society has not been remotely realised by the organisations represented by the distinguished leaders today generally having a workforce that does not remotely reflect the communities that they serve.

I can no longer accept the deficit model of such people blaming the deep rooted and stagnant racial inequalities on black people. 

I see from the workforce diversity statistics provided by some of the partner organisations represented on the Board that there is still much work to be done to improve the job opportunities and prospects in Doncaster for young people from BME communities:

St Leger Homes is 98% white;

DMBC’s minority workforce is approximately 4.5%; including white Irish and White other;

The Children’s Trust has very few people who look like me.

We have the qualifications.  We have the experience. And yet disturbingly the relative likelihood of a white person being appointed after shortlisting is 2 x greater than for a black citizen.

Chair, what can be done about this?

In last year’s public health annual report Dr Suckling made the link between having a good job with have good general health and wellbeing.

In this year’s ‘No health without mental health’ annual report, he stresses the importance of working with people to address the problems they face.  I support the notion of working with people.

It is in this context that I ask through your position as the Chair how this Board can address the racial inequalities in collaboration with affected black citizens?  

How can black citizens be involved in selecting the new DMBC Chief Executive, which provides an opportunity to deliver a transformational race equality step change in Doncaster?”

During discussion on the points raised by Mr Brown, partners confirmed that information on the steps being taken by each organisation in relation to addressing racial inequalities and engagement with minority groups was publicly available and published, for example, in their Annual Reports.  It was acknowledged that, while there was always room for improvement, there were examples of good work being done in the area of engagement with BME communities, such as collaborative work with BME United.

Having thanked Mr Brown for his questions, the Chair explained that she was not aware of the recruitment process for the Council’s Chief Executive but that his comments had been noted.