Agenda item

Report of the Director of Community and Children’s Services & Interim Director of Public Health

Officers informed the Board that the NHS’s public health functions were transferred to local authorities by the Health and Social Care Act 2012 on 1st April, 2012. This gave local authorities the duty to advance the health and wellbeing of people who live or work in their area. It also required local authorities to set up Health and Wellbeing Boards and for those Health and Wellbeing Boards to produce an annual Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) and Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy (JHWS). The City of London already had a JSNA in place; however, this was the first time that a JHWS has been produced for the City of London.

The Board was informed that the Department of Health had also released a number of Outcomes frameworks. A key measure of success for Health and Wellbeing Boards would be their ability to influence improvements measured according to The Public Health Outcomes Framework (nationally there are over 60 Public Health outcomes).

Members were reminded that the Shadow Board had previously discussed the outcome frameworks and another paper being considered today asks the Board to formally identify their priority outcome indicators for 2013/14.

In response to a query from Members, officers said that although local authorities were now required to provide certain mandated public health functions under the Act, such as support to the Clinical Commissioning Group, sexual health services and the National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP), the majority of public health functions were not mandatory, and levels of provision must be determined locally, according to need. Members also asked Officers to investigate the possibility of creating a cross-directorate approach to boosting the health and wellbeing of City workers.

RESOLVED – that the Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy be adopted.