Agenda item

Members of the Select Committee are asked to consider the information presented within the report and note the key issues described.

Dr Bruce Laurence addressed the Select Committee. A copy of the update can be found on their Minute Book and as an online appendix to these minutes, a summary of the update is set out below.

Council to take Time to Change Employers Pledge

Bath and North East Somerset Council is in the process of working towards taking the Time to Change Employers Pledge.  By signing the pledge the Council is demonstrating a commitment to change how we think and act about mental health in the workplace and make sure that employees who are facing mental health problems feel supported. 

We are aiming to sign the Pledge on World Mental Health Day 10th October 2017 and are planning some media promotion to surround it. 

Adopting HarmLess as an approach to supporting young people who self-harm

In Autumn 2017 we will be replacing the existing Multiagency Guidance for Staff Working with Young People who Self-harm with a new web based support resource called HarmLess. Created by Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) colleagues at Oxford Health,  HarmLess provides more comprehensive information and links as well as an assessment tool designed and trialled for used by teachers / youth workers/ GPs etc.

Family Nurse Partnership Service

The FNP service delivers a licensed, evidence-based home visiting intervention for first time vulnerable younger mothers from 16 weeks in their pregnancy up until the child’s 2 year review.

The team consists of one full time supervisor with a maximum caseload of 5 and 4 (0.8WTE) family nurses with a case load of 18 families each, and there is one vacancy currently.

There has been a reduction in teenage pregnancies locally, and consequent reduction in notifications of under-19s to FNP. In agreement with the National FNP Unit B&NES have extended the eligibility criteria to include under-25s with 2 additional vulnerability factors. For 4 months the service did not see any increase in notifications, which raised the issue of how women are identified as vulnerable in early pregnancy and how they are signposted to early help services. Many of the women identified are in their second time pregnancies.

Domestic abuse: Some successes with funding

Approximately £270k over 3 years funding has been secured for Home Office transformation fund for domestic abuse services. This provides additional prevention work in the community, a youth based domestic abuse awareness programme and enhanced provision for survivors of domestic abuse with complex needs.

This is in addition to:

£100k from DCLG over 2 years for enhanced resettlement services

40k for two years from St. John’s Hospital to Southdown for support to low and medium risk cases.

A successful Avon-wide, police-led bid to support our MARAC process (MARAC being Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference), which manages cases in the community.

But… the situation for our domestic abuse services is still very fragile with a severe lack of mainstream recurrent funding from the Council and NHS, leaving a number of key services vulnerable to ending next year.

NHS Health Checks

Over 6,500 people in B&NES took up the offer of a free NHS Health Check during 16/17. Our outreach service have been visiting workplaces to encourage more men and younger people to have a health check and over the course of the year they have worked with employers such as Rotork, Horstman, the Royal United Hospital and  Bath Taxi drivers (in partnership with our colleagues in Public Protection).

The B&NES NHS Health Check programme benchmarks extremely well against national and regional comparators. We rank 15/152 local authorities for our performance on offers made for a health check (99.3% of the eligible population in B&NES have now been offered a check) and 18/152 for our performance on the proportion of people who have received a health check (49.9%). Over the coming year we will be working with Virgin Care to continue to look at how we can increase the uptake of checks amongst those living in our more disadvantaged neighbourhoods

Councillor Lin Patterson asked what provision is in place for women who are violently abused by their husbands.

Dr Bruce Laurence replied that provision is available at the Southside Centre, but this can become stretched on occasions. He added that it should be acknowledged that domestic abuse can also be female on male, male on male and female on female.

Councillor Lizzie Gladwyn asked what age level was covered by the work and support for young people who self-harm.

Dr Bruce Laurence replied that he was not sure and that he would find out.

Councillor Tim Ball commented that he was concerned that paediatricians were not diagnosing initial signs of mental health in children and that this could to problems further down the line.

Dr Bruce Laurence replied that he would be happy to have a further conversation with Councillor Ball outside the forum of the Select Committee.

The Chair thanked Dr Laurence for his update on behalf of the Select Committee.