Minutes:
The Health Minister, Matt Hancock, announced last summer that the NHS will refer patients presenting with mental health difficulties associated with loneliness or worries about debts, benefits or housing issues etc., to exercise or social activity classes instead of prescribing drugs. This policy was reinforced in The NHS Long Term Plan published recently.
Also known as ‘social prescribing’, the idea is to minimise the amount of time GPs and hospitals spend dealing with social rather than medical issues. According to the East and North Hertfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group (“CCG”), this could amount to 20% of a GPs time.
I was glad to read on the CCG’s website that “Hertfordshire GPs lead the way with alternative prescriptions” and to note that local doctors believe that social prescribing can make a real difference to patients’ lives.
Congruently, local groups and charities will require additional financial support in order to meet the increase in demand from social prescriptions. In this respect, could the Executive Member for public health confirm;
i) How much has been invested and budgeted for this scheme to date?
ii) That the Council will invest in targeted local groups and charities in order to meet the incidental increase in their user base?
Answer
The Leader, Councillor T.Kingsbury asked Councillor F.Thomson (Executive Member, Governance and Public Health) to answer :-
“Thank you for your question Councillor Caliskan.
The transfer of responsibility for significant areas of public health under the Health and Social Care Act 2012 from the NHS to local government is one of the most significant extensions of local government powers and duties in a generation. In two tier local government areas, public health work (including health protection, health improvement and work to support the wider determinants of health) is delivered between the County Council and the districts/boroughs.
The Director of Public Health at Hertfordshire County Council took the decision to work directly with all 10 district and Borough Councils in a whole-systems approach to delivering the Public Health Outcomes Framework. This became the basis for the Public Health Partnership, and the funding that came with the offer for an innovative mechanism to deliver public health initiatives between Hertfordshire County Council and Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council.
As a Council we are very aware of the concept of social prescribing and have been working with this approach as part of our partnership work with County Council.
The Council has not been allocated funding specifically for social prescribing, however we have used our funding from HCC (£200,000 over a 4 year period) to support many projects which are based on the social prescribing model.
Some of these projects include: The Shape Up Campaign, Hoarding, Meet and Eat, Mens Sheds and Healthfest.
In addition to the projects listed above, WHBC has been delivering the social prescribing model through the establishment of our Health walks scheme, working with Hertfordshire health walks, the CCG and local GPs to set up and deliver a comprehensive programme of health walks throughout the borough. The scheme continues to be extremely successful and popular with our residents.
As well as the previous funding from HCC, the Council offers grants to local organisations, through our Annual Grants and Small Community Grants. Additionally via the Public Health Partnership funding, the Council has supported various community groups eg. JOCA (Welwyn Rugby Club mental health project); Pegasus Football Club Heart Screening; Walking Netball; junior PARK Run.
It remains to be seen how the CCG and NHS will allocate and manage any additional funding as outlined last year and in the recently published NHS Long Term Plan.”
Councillor Caliskan in noting that there was no support for social prescribing in the Council’s corporate priorities or budget papers asked in a supplementary question of clarification if this would be reviewed?
Councillor Thomson said that there was a current process to review the Council’s Strategy and priorities and all options for the next few years.