Agenda and minutes

Apologies for absence were received from Councillor G Boston and the Portfolio Holder for Health and Wellbeing, Councillor P Hayes.

Councillor B Silvester (visitor)

To provide an opportunity for Members and Officers to declare any personal and/or prejudicial interests and for members to declare the existence of a party whip in relation to any item on the agenda.

None

To approve the minutes of the meetings held on 10 March 2011 and 14 April 2011.

RESOLVED: That the minutes of the meetings of the Committee held on 10 March and 14 April be confirmed as correct records.

A total period of 15 minutes is allocated for members of the public to make a statement(s) on any matter that falls within the remit of the Committee.

Individual members of the public may speak for up to 5 minutes, but the Chairman will decide how the period of time allocated for public speaking will be apportioned, where there are a number of speakers.

Note: in order for officers to undertake any background research, it would be helpful if members of the public notified the Scrutiny officer listed at the foot of the agenda at least one working day before the meeting with brief details of the matter to be covered.

There were no members of the public present who wished to address the Committee.

To consider the report of the Borough Solicitor.

The Committee considered a report of the Borough Solicitor on draft Terms of Reference, membership and meeting dates.

At the annual council meeting, approval had been given to splitting the responsibilities of the existing Health and Adult Social Care Scrutiny Committee so as to allow two new scrutiny committees to concentrate on the detailed work in the two areas: Adult Social Care, and Health and Wellbeing. 

The powers of the existing Health and Adult Social Care Scrutiny Committee

were set out in Appendix A to the report and in Appendix B were the

proposed separation of powers and their allocation to an Adult Social Care

Scrutiny Committee, and a Health and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee.

Council had agreed the provisional terms of reference for the new

Committees and extended an invitation to each of the Overview and Scrutiny

Committees, the Scrutiny Chairmen and the Constitution Committee to

consider the terms of reference and submit any views to the Borough

Solicitor.  A report would then be submitted to the July Council meeting to

approve the terms of reference.

Members of the Committee queried the rationale behind the decision to split the responsibilities between two committees and were advised that it was based on the extra workload that would be generated by the transfer of the responsibility for public health into the Council from the Primary Care Trust.  It was noted that the Cabinet Members’ Portfolio responsibilities had not yet been finalised and until this had happened, Scrutiny Committee remits could not be finalised either.  A meeting of the Scrutiny Chairmen’s Group was to take place next week to discuss Cabinet Portfolio responsibilities with the Leader of the Council.

Members of the Committee strongly expressed the view that “wellbeing” should be a major part of its remit and this should be reflected in any approved Terms of Reference; this should include both the strategic and operational aspects of wellbeing.  It was also felt that there would be strong links between the work of this Committee and the Adult Social Care Scrutiny Committee and it was therefore important to share work programmes in case any joint working was needed in the future; there may also be similar links with the Children and Families Scrutiny Committee.  It was explained that this potential situation was recognised by officers and that one of the roles undertaken by the Scrutiny Chairmen’s Group was to have an overview of all work programmes and ensure there was shared working where required and avoid any duplication.

The Committee also discussed frequency and timing of meetings and agreed that meetings should be held on alternate months on Thursday mornings.

RESOLVED:  That

(a) the Borough Solicitor be advised that the Committee strongly believes that its Terms of Reference must include specific reference to “wellbeing”  and this should cover both strategic and operational aspects of wellbeing;

(b) that future meetings of the Committee be held on alternate months on Thursdays commencing at 10.00 am as follows:

28 July;

8 September;

10 November;

12 January;  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

a) Tim Butcher, Assistant Director for Performance Improvement, will present the North West Ambulance Service’s Quality Account (attached) on which the Committee is invited to comment; and

b) Sarah Smith will present the current performance figures (attached).

Tim Butcher, Assistant Director for Performance Improvement, North West Ambulance Trust (NWAS) presented the NWAS Quality Account on which the Committee was invited to comment.

The vision of NWAS was “Delivering the right care, at the right time, and in the right place”.  NWAS provided a range of services:

      999 paramedic emergency service;

      Patient transport service;

      Emergency preparedness;

      Urgent Care.

The Service had 3 emergency control centres and dealt with 1.1 million 999 calls a year and carried out 2 million Patient Transport Service journeys.

The organisation focused on Quality; Performance and Finance which reflected the importance of not just focusing on response times but also ensuring the right action was taken for the patient, once an ambulance arrived.

The service faced a number of challenges including overwhelming demand for urgent care via 999, overwhelming demand for unplanned on the day patient transport and an increase in health challenges in the North West. 

The Emergency Care service needed to ensure that the national performance standards were met, it delivered against the new clinical and system indicators, minimised the number of extended waits by patients and the Control Centre infrastructure was strengthened,

The Patient Transport Service now comprised one single North West contract and a robust booking and call taking system had been introduced; eligibility criteria had been developed and applied and a bureau concept was being developed to look at the use of any available transport. 

The service had a major role in emergency situations and had to ensure it was prepared to respond to any major incidents.

In relation to Urgent Care, the service had introduced, or was involved in, a number of initiatives including Hear and Treat (advice over the phone), See and Treat, an Urgent Care Desk (where a trained paramedic would phone the caller back), the 111 national scheme was to be piloted in Blackpool (for people needing urgent, but not emergency care, to call) and the NWAS Kitemark (where centres would be awarded the kitemark because NWAS knew what service was provided there and would transport a patient there rather than Accident and Emergency, if this was more appropriate).

The Committee was aware of the response time standards which had been outlined at previous meetings and these were now to be replaced by 2 categories:

      Category A (red calls) which required a response in 8 minutes with a 19 minute transport standard; and

      Category C (green calls) which were broken down into Green 1, 2, 3 and 4 with response times and telephone assessment times to be agreed. 

There were also 13 new Quality Indicators covering various items including “outcome from cardiac arrest”, “outcome from stroke”, “time to answer call”, “service experience” and “time to treatment”. 

Tim then introduced the NWAS Quality Account.  Looking back to last year, five areas had been identified for delivering improvements: End of Life care; Frequent Callers; Chain of Survival and Complementary Resources; Acute Stroke Care and Heart Attack.  The Account outlined action taken under each heading to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 8.

Guy Kilminster, Head of Health and Wellbeing, will brief the committee on the following matters:

      The Health and Wellbeing Service,

      The Health Inequalities Strategy, and

      The transfer of the public health function to the Council.

Guy Kilminster, Head of Health and Wellbeing, briefed the committee on the following matters:

      The Health and Wellbeing Service – this was a service providing a range of leisure and cultural services including libraries, green spaces, Public Rights of Way and leisure services;  however, a corporate restructure was underway with the results expected later in the year; Portfolio Holder responsibilities had also been reviewed with operational aspects of leisure and culture in the Environment Portfolio Holder’s remit, libraries were in the Performance and Capacity Portfolio and the leisure and cultural strategy under the remit of the Health and Wellbeing Portfolio;

      The Health Inequalities Strategy and transfer of public health to the Local Authority – a Transition Board had been developed that included the Chief Executive; Director of Adults, Community, Health and Wellbeing; Director of Children’s Services and Director of Public Health.  In 2013 the Borough would need to have a Health Inequalities Strategy in place and work towards this had begun through the development, over the next few months, of a Health Inequalities framework to identify the main areas of health inequality.   There was a large amount of data which would be needed at Local Area Partnership level and the work of the Transition Board would include looking at existing data to assess its usefulness and identify any gaps in data. 

During the discussion on the item, the following points were made:

      it was essential to have some analysis of data as well as the figures;

      there were wide variations within a LAP area;

      each LAP could play an important role as LAP members knew their area well and such local knowledge could help towards developing local solutions.

RESOLVED: that the update be noted and a further report be brought to the meeting in September.

To consider the report of the Borough Solicitor.

The Committee considered a report of the Borough Solicitor on the Work Programme.  The Work Programme as submitted had been inherited from the former Health and Adult Social Care Scrutiny Committee and as such was likely to include a number of items relevant for the new Adult Social Care Scrutiny Committee and a number of completed items.

It was also noted that Portfolio Holders’ functions and responsibilities had not been finalised and this Committee’s remit was also to be considered at the Council meeting in July (as discussed earlier in the meeting).  It was therefore more appropriate to wait until these matters had been finalised before considering the Committee’s work plan.

RESOLVED: that the Chairman and Vice Chairman, together with the Scrutiny Officer, review the Work Programme, as submitted, for consideration at the next meeting.

To receive the minutes of the meeting of the Committee held on 4 April 2011.

The Committee considered the minutes of the meeting of the Cheshire and Wirral Councils Joint Scrutiny Committee held on 4 April.

RESOLVED:  that the minutes be received. 

To consider extracts of the Forward Plan that fall within the remit of the Committee.

There were no items on the current Forward Plan for consideration by the Committee.

To note any consultations referred to the Committee from Cabinet and to determine whether any further action is appropriate.

There were no consultations from Cabinet.