PAPER A

NOTES OF EVIDENCE

Meeting	Policy Commission for Care, Health and Housing
Ref	He.PC.17/05/06
Date	17^th May 2006
Time	18.00hrs
Place	Committee Room 1, County Hall, Newport, Isle of Wight
Purpose of meeting	Formal public meeting
Attendance	Commission	Cllrs Erica Oulton (Chairman), Geoff Lumley, Roger Mazillius, Win McRobert, Margaret Webster, Colin West and David Whittaker
	Cabinet	Cllr Dawn Cousins
	Secretariat	None
	Other Councillors	Cllr Andy Sutton
	Officers	Ms Louise Biggs - Overview and Scrutiny (O&S) Team Mr Andy Shorkey - O&S Team Mr Andrew Williamson, Interim Director of Adult and Community Services
	Stakeholders	Ms Jane Wilshaw, Joint Director of Nursing and Patient and Public Involvement – Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Trust
	Apologies	None
Agenda Items
1. To agree the notes of evidence arising at the meeting held on 22^nd March 2006	Notes agreed with no amendments.
2. Declarations of Interest.	None
3. To receive a presentation on forthcoming work on the white Paper, “our health, our care, our say” (Enquiry H4/06)	3.1 Within the new Strategic Health Authority (SHA) boundary map, ‘Isle of Wight Healthcare’ appears as one entity. This reflects the strong representations made by Isle of Wight organisations in response to the recent consultation on Strategic Health Authority areas in England. 3.2 The White Paper highlights the importance of partnership working between organisations to include: the alignment of financial planning cycles of organisations, creating targets for health and social care within Local Area Agreements (LAAs), developing a single complaints procedure, increasing the responsibilities for Directors of Public Health and an increased emphasis on “wellbeing”. 3.3 The white paper also focuses on the need to move care outside of hospitals into the primary care sector including initiatives around practice-based commissioning, meeting out-patient appointment target and patient transport. 3.4 There will be an impact of delivering more care outside of hospitals in terms of finding the people to carry out this work, e.g. home carers and providing sufficient network of support for those being cared for at home. 3.5 There is currently joint working between the local NHS and Council, e.g. the Occupational Therapy team, and this good practice can be carried over to areas. Although there are different lines of accountability. 3.6 Improving access to primary care and community services is a key goal of the white paper, including the improvement of sexual health and mental health services, weekend access to GPs and the introduction of a “life-check” for patients. 3.7 The white paper carries no extra funding with it and nay new initiatives will have to be developed from existing resources. 3.8 The white paper draws attention to the possibility of ‘social enterprise’ assisting and/or taking on the delivery of services. The Council is currently carrying out a mapping exercise to identify where gaps in service lie. Social enterprise could be utilised to fill these gaps. 3.9 The need for organisations to deal with the transition between child to adult care is highlighted in the white paper. 3.10 Any new integrated organisation will not be created until financial balance is achieved within the local NHS, as required by the Audit Commission. 3.11 Work is currently underway on the objectives as set out by the white paper, for example the work on a joint strategy for carers. 3.12 The joint commissioning of learning disability services could be an area of policy development for the commission.
4. To agree the annual Healthcheck comments 2006	4 The Annual Healthcheck comments were agreed.
5. Other information	5.1 The Patient and Public Involvement liaison officer from the local NHS highlighted that they are currently developing new ways of working within adult mental health and intermediate care. 5.2 The local NHS are setting up an ‘expert carers’ programme in the same way as their ‘expert patients programme, where patients with long term conditions can share advice with others who have the same condition. 5.3 The business plan for the new organisation (combined Primary Care Trust and Healthcare NHS Trust) is currently being developed. 5.4 There are financial issues affecting NHS Trusts nationally including the GMS contracts, new consultants contracts and Agenda for Change. 5.5 The new joint trust chairs will be chosen in July and then the executive and non-executives by October 2006. 5.6 The new IDOC number was highlighted as: 0845 609 2244.
Actions	1. For the policy commission to develop policy options for the delivery of aims contained within the white paper, “our care, our health, our say”. 2. The Joint Chief Executive of the PCT / Healthcare Trust to be invited to the next commission on 28^th June 2006	LB / Policy Commission LB