Transcript Slide 1

MAINTAINING
MOMENTUM
Report of a regional seminar
held in Nottingham on
Monday 26th September 2011
Ensuring Health and Wellbeing Boards
capitalise on the progress made by
Children’s Trust partnerships
This seminar was convened and supported by DH to bring senior
leaders from across the region and across the sectors to consider key
lessons from recent developments in children’s services that might
inform the development of Health and Wellbeing Boards (HWBs).
Two strong sentiments had been recently expressed:
• That the ‘journey’ travelled by children’s trust partners recently
bears many characteristics of the path being followed to establish
Health and Wellbeing Boards; and that we should take care to
maintain the partnership momentum that the children’s service
experience might provide.
• That there is a potential risk in the alignment of new partners and
plans that the importance of children’s priorities could be
overwhelmed, partly as a potential consequence of stronger health
service presence in HWBs.
This seminar was held therefore, to make a contribution to regional
learning that might mitigate these potential risks and strengthen
understanding about progress across the region
The main learning outcomes were
• The establishment of an effective HWBs presents councils with a
unique opportunity to bring the strategic leadership and development
of people services into good alignment with community needs.
• The experience of children’s trust arrangements over recent years
provides some key learning.
• The JSNA needs to be developed to cover the full range of needs for
children and adults and become the engine-room of HWB priority
setting.
• The JSNA also needs to offer the sophistication to drill down to
identify levels of need at community level to support work in
localities.
• A clear investment plan needs to be agreed at HWB level to address
priorities right across the partnerships.
• The financial envelope has changed and we cannot simply expect to
replicate previous service patterns through new arrangements.
• Accountability and responsibilities will need clarity and efficiency.
• A variety of boundary issues will present challenges to the work of
HWBs
Developmental checklist for HWBs in relation
to children’s services
1. HWBs have a statutory role, whereas Children’s Trusts and
Partnerships are no longer a statutory requirement. What
consideration does the HWB need to give to where its Children’s
Trust Partnership now sits in relation to the HWB, particularly in
relation to:
a) the local Children’s Safeguarding Board
b) performance reporting against the Children & Young People’s
Plan and Every Child Matters Framework?
2. Are we clear about how accountability arrangements will work for
both reporting to the HWB and children’s partnership structures
where these are retained, e.g. naming individuals accountable for
the delivery plans commissioned by the HWB?
3. Have we established whether children’s community based
budgets (eg. Drug and Alcohol, Youth Offending Teams, Family
Intervention Projects and Total Place budgets) should sit with
HWBs or with Community Safety Partnerships?
4. Does the JSNA integrate health and care priorities across children,
adults and communities and provide a key strategic document to
inform the Health and Wellbeing Strategy?
5. Does the JSNA & HWB include a cost base for children’s health
and care to inform investment/disinvestment plans for children’s
services to drive local authority and GP Consortia commissioning
plans, which can be achieved within reducing budgets?
6. Have we started to develop some integrated commissioning
activity for children to ensure that children’s services are wellestablished in HWB planning?