COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP BOARD

Tuesday 7 October 2014 at 8.30am
Council Chamber, Town Hall, Maidenhead

Present:

Mike Agate FSB
Geoff Bush DWP
Andrew Davies DALC
Ralph Facey Radian Housing
Kate Ford TVP
Ramesh Kukar WAM Get Involved
Christine Mora East Berkshire College
Chris O’Hare Citizens Advice Bureau
Karnail Pannu WAMCF
Dave Phillips Fire & Rescue
Viki Wadd Head of Operations for WAM CCG

Mike McGaughrin (Chairman) RBWM Managing Director and Chairman of the CPB
Cllr Mrs Bateson (Vice-Chairman) RBWM Lead Member for Partnerships
Alison Alexander RBWM Strategic Director of Children's Services
Wendy Binmore RBWM Democratic Services Officer
Andrew Green RBWM Partnership Co-ordinator
Joanne Horton RBWM Grow Our Own
Harjit Hunjan RBWM Community & Business Partnerships Manager
Rutuja Kulkarni RBWM Head of Public Health
Brian Martin RBWM Community Safety Co-ordinator
Simon McKenzie RBWM Early Help & First Response Manager

Apologies

Andrew Elkington RBWM Head of Policy & Performance
Catherine Mullins RBWM / CCG Strategic Commissioning
Safia Mohamud RBWM Community Learning Manager
Chris Hilton RBWM Regeneration & Economic Development Director

1. Welcome by Chairman

The Chairman welcomed the Members of the Community Partnership Board.

2. Minutes of the meeting held on 3 June 2014

The Minutes were approved as a true record of the meeting. There were no matters arising not otherwise covered on the agenda. It was suggested that Microphones at the meeting would help to ensure all attendees were able to hear the discussions taking place. The Chair confirmed that these would be available for the next meeting of the Board.




ROYAL BERKSHIRE FIRE AND RESCUE SERVICE STRATEGIC COMMITMENTS

Dave Phillips from the Royal Berkshire Fire Authority gave a brief presentation which covered the Fire Authority’s New Policy Direction. The main points of the presentation included:

Commitment One – Prevention:

o The Fire Service would educate people on how to prevent fires and other emergencies, and what to do when they happen.
o The three focus areas included:
Effective information sharing to target resources – People were still being injured and dying in their homes and there was a correlation in the type of people involved in such incidents i.e. Mental Health, infirm, frail, immobile. The Fire Service would liaise with other agencies on how to identify vulnerable groups.
Join-up prevention activity with other organisations.
Increase the number of volunteers.
Make a wider impact and contribute to the wider determinates of health.
Share databases to target areas more easily.
Talking to WAM Get Involved regarding recruitment of volunteers.

Commitment Two – Information Sharing:

o Integrating work with public Health i.e. smoking cessation
o Referring to other services such as falls prevention
o Multi agency approach
o Targeted interventions which could include home visits
o Campaigns – could include passing on details of other organisations, sharing of information.

Commitment Three – Protection:

o The Fire Service would ensure appropriate fire safety standards in buildings.
o Focus Area:
Increasing installation of sprinklers and other fire suppression systems in public buildings.
In addition supporting responsible economic growth which would be better business for all.
If any new developers emerge, the Fire Service would want to talk to them to encourage them to install sprinklers in their new builds.

Commitment Four – Broader safety, Health and Wellbeing agenda:

o The Fire Service will seek opportunities to contribute to a broader safety, health and wellbeing agenda.
o Focus Areas:
Raising aspiration, attainment and employability of young people.
Improving public health outcomes.
Reducing crime and disorder.
Making assets available to partners and commissioners to improve safety, health and wellbeing outcomes for local people.
o The Fire Service would enrol young people on five day courses such as Fire Break which help young people to learn about discipline and team work. The Fire Service would also look at work readiness in young people and look for ways to increase readiness for employment.
o Some training courses offered to young people through the Fire Service would help tackle other areas of health and wellbeing such as obesity due to the activity levels of the courses offered.
o The Fire Service will prove that it could help others in different forms, not just in fire prevention.
o The programme would last for five years and would begin in 2015.

Dave Phillips stated the aim of the presentation was to establish who how to network with in taking forward the action plan. It would only be successful if work was carried out within the community. The demand for the Fire Service had reduced over the last 10 years due to the fire prevention work and education programmes carried out by the Service. However, resources would always need to be made available to deal with emergencies, such as flooding. Dave Phillips stated his role involved co-ordinating prevention work and he was able to collaborate with other agencies to look at best practice.

The Chairman stated the presentation as a good template for others. The key thing to focus on was to target the Service to the right groups and people. Information sharing was a concern as there was a need to share among all areas. Role-modelling and mentoring was vital and a very positive contribution to communities made by the Fire Service.

Brian Martin, Community Safety Co-ordinator said the Fire Service used to run an exercise working with young children on topics such as stranger danger and it would be a good idea for that to be continued.. The Community Safety Co-ordinator added his team had an information sharing responsibility by law and that people could choose not to share information unless there was a crime prevention issue. Dave Phillips confirmed the Fire Service did carry out some work with the Youth Offending Team and he wanted that to start up again. There was a young fire fighter scheme on the agenda which could become an apprenticeship scheme. He added that data sharing between agencies needed to be looked at in more detail.

The Community and Business Partnerships Manager stated he had been working with local CCGs to address loneliness; WAM Get Involved could liaise with the Fire Service on how to tackle the issue. Dave Philips confirmed a befriending scheme could help and the Fire Service was in the process of a mapping exercise to identify those vulnerable groups. With the befriending scheme, the Fire Service would visit vulnerable people in their homes, fit smoke alarms and then follow that up with demonstrations on how to test their smoke alarms. Other ways the Fire Service could help included:

Misting sprinklers installed above beds and arm chairs of those who smoked to extinguish cigarette fires.
Cooking fires were a big cause of death when in conjunction with dementia and partially sighted people; as a preventative measure, cookers could be fitted with cut-offs.
The Fire Service wanted to promote new technologies to Social Care Teams.

Karnail Pannu requested a visit from the Fire Department as Diwali was being celebrated soon so he wanted Dave Phillips to attend a group meeting before then and give a talk on fire safety.


UPDATE ON THE ‘WAM GET INVOLVED’ CONTRACT

Ramesh Kukar from WAM Get Involved gave a brief presentation which included the following main points:

The three main objectives of WAM Get Involved:
o Providing leadership and building the capacity of the voluntary and community sector.
o Increasing volunteering and removing the barriers to civic participation.
o Promoting and increasing levels of employee volunteers and corporate social responsibility – capturing the energy of the business community to get involved.
Providing leadership and building the capacity of voluntary and community sectors:
o 10 workshops over 12 months – reaching communities and Awards for All delivered in July 2014. Planned: Social Media, Trustee Induction and running a successful event – enabling charities to apply for funding from the National Lottery.
o 51 Self Help Guides – 66 Self Help Guides had been developed and made available – the quality of groups was excellent but, there were not many of them so:
o ‘Self Help’ toolkit had been developed and made available for residents to establish new groups.
o Four Volunteer Co-ordinator meetings were planned. One Co-ordinators Networking meeting had been delivered and attended by 25 delegates. Eight delegates had no previous VCS engagement and welcomed the opportunity.
o Courses had been run on Social Media and had reached organisations that had not been reached before.
o WAM Get Involved Weekly Newsletter which covered training, funding and sector vacancies – first distributed on 4 July 2014 and had been distributed to 220 trustees, staff professionals and managers. The Newsletter communicated what charities were doing.
o A bespoke training session with Thames Hospice had been delivered.
o 10 E-Learning courses had been made available including Fire Safety and Risk Assessments – 15 organisations including People to Places had access and were using the courses with their volunteers.
o Working relationship formed with RBWM Children’s Services Directorate to engage the children and young people’s organisations across the Borough.
o There was a need for more activity with children – funded by the Lottery and other trusts.
Increasing volunteering and removing the barriers to civic participation:
o 630 Residents had received information on volunteering through active promotion and engagement events such as the Ascot Retirement Fair in August 2014.
o 170 Residents had subscribed to a monthly community newsletter.
o Weekly volunteer surgeries and drop-in sessions delivered across various venues including the Maidenhead Library, Windsor Library and St Marks Hospital – St Marks Hospital was more difficult to arrange due to the location so that may need to be relocated. WAM Get Involved had been looking at holding the St Marks Hospital sessions at a shopping centre instead.
WAM Get Involved Database:
o Feedback Groups:
Liked the idea of posting their own local opportunities – they liked being in control.
Excited at being able to post their own local events.
Groups saw the benefit of registering their ‘inactive’ volunteers.
It was possible to make minor improvements regularly.
o Feedback Residents:
Easy to navigate and search for opportunities in their own time.
Gave residents ‘choice’.
Opportunity to share their time across various organisations.
Provided ideas before retiring.
Promoting and increasing levels of employee volunteers and corporate social responsibility:
o A database of 2,000 local businesses had been established.
o A CSR toolkit was in production for launch in November 2014 and was 50% completed to date.
o The Community and Business Partnerships Manager and WAM Get Involved had been working with McFarlane Telfer Ltd to work on Business Champions.
o Two Charties had accessed marketing business skills with Apttus EMEA Ltd: Thames Hospice and WAM Get Involved – building marketing plan to help recruit more volunteers.
o One Community Challenge: Windsor Foodshare.
o One IT Training: Older People’s Forum
The Community Database:
o The WAM Community Database was primarily designed to be a portal for local community residents to allow them to get involved in local community activities and to signpost them to local groups and events.
o The Database:
250 organisations were now registered.
73 Volunteering opportunities for residents registered from local groups.
A list of local events was available through the Database.
A list of local news bulletins available.
14 local groups had passwords to the Database.

The Chairman stated the development of WAM Get Involved was key to the Borough in helping enable people to volunteer. Ramesh Kukar confirmed advice on grant funding opportunities and further support was available through the Council’s external funding service – Our Community Enterprise. WAM Get Involved captured information about people or groups which required funding and then that information got communicated to trust funds.

The Community and Business Partnerships Manager stated WAM Get Involved supported the voluntary sector and were proposing a calendar of events i.e. Big Society days, Volunteering conferences and Volunteer of the Year events. As soon as the details were finalised, they would be communicated to the Community Partnership Board.

Ramesh Kukar confirmed there would be a voluntary sector report produced later in the year to see the state of organisations and how many volunteers were being used. The Chairman said he wanted to link the promotion of the Council’s annual grants with WAM Get Involved’s website and publicise the grants available. Christina Mora, East Berkshire College stated the college had hundreds of young people who would be interested in getting involved. Ramesh Kukar confirmed he would speak to Christina Mora following the meeting.

Action: For the Community & Business Partnerships Manager to bring the finalised plan of the calendar of Big Society events planned to the next meeting of the community partnership board.

Action: For the Community & Business Partnerships Manager to give a brief update at the next board meeting of how the promotion of annual grants can be linked with WAM Get Involved.

INTENSIVE FAMILY SUPPORT PROJECT (IFS)

Simon McKenzie, Early Help & First Response Manager, gave a brief update on the project which included the following key points:

Number of Families:
o To date the Borough had worked with 151 families as part of the Troubled Families programme, thus exceeding the 140 target. There were 58 families whose cases were currently open with eight families on the waiting list. At present new referrals were likely to have to wait for two months. Main referrers had been advised of the time delay and that they needed to discuss that with families before referring them.
Claims:
o The Borough had made claims to date for 76 families and was ready to make claims for a further 15 families, that took the borough’s total of turned around families to 91 (65% of the three year target).
o Due to ongoing difficulties with DWP, the Borough had been working with the data team looking at housing benefit claims to identify additional families that could be claimed for.
National Developments:
o The Borough received positive feedback following the audit by DCLG on claims as to the thoroughness of the processes followed.
o DCLG visited the IFS team in July 2014 which was positive with DCLG subsequently commenting on the teams commitment to the programme and hard work.
o The IFS Team were now in the position to apply for the second wave of entry into phase two of the programme as they would have met the national target of 65% or more of families being turned around by the end of October 2014. That enabled expansion of the programme to work with families with more varied needs.
o The target set by DCLG for phase two was to work with 450 families over five years. Funding would be set at £1,000 up front with the ability to claim an addition £800 for turned around families. There continued to be a grant for the Troubled Families Co-Ordinator.
Local Developments:
o The IFS Team appointed an apprentice.
o The Health Visitor funded by the CCG had undertaken 52 health evaluations and had run activities such as a healthy eating workshop/picnic and first aid course during the summer 2014. Evaluating the impact was difficult but the feedback received from families was positive.
o The IFS Team were due to run a group for young women considered at risk of exploitation in the autumn 2014. A similar group was run in 2013 which focused on building self-esteem and social education.

The Chairman stated the programme had been quite successful in identifying where the complex families were. There was a clear link between mentoring and coaching capacity and IFS; it was good to see the numbers supported going up. The Early Help & First Response Manager confirmed one of the overriding common themes in identifying Troubled Families is that they would have been known to Safeguarding Services. Preventing those families getting into difficulties following the programme saved the Council a lot of money. Other factors included domestic abuse, unemployment and poor school attendance. Occasionally it was a case of ‘my parents don’t go to work so I won’t’. The Chairman commented that data sharing between agencies was key. Dave Phillips agreed that linking to others and working with agencies and referrals was what the Fire Service was trying to do and would produce the most successful outcome.

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

Andrew Green, the Community Partnership Co-Ordinator stated he had nothing to add regarding the community surveys as there had had only been 3 responses to the survey but he did have a helpful meeting with the Fire Service. The Community and Business Partnerships Manager stated the One Borough group which was a community cohesion group, continued to grow and there was a great opportunity to develop that route. It represented groups that did not usually reach out to the Borough. He had a meeting to discuss that on 7 October 2014. The Chairman stated there was a need to pick up on that and continue with the work.

Action: The Community Partnerships officer to bring update on Community Engagement to the next meeting.

EMPLOYMENT AND SKILLS

Jo Horton, Employment & Training Advisor stated she had been working with the IFS Team to see how to break down barriers. Grow Our Own was a drop-in session which worked alongside welfare to work programmes; it focused on developing the skills of people and they were working with young people in the Borough and continually evaluating what could be done to enhance the programme. The Community and Business Partnership Manager confirmed the weekly job club was a free service funded by the Borough.

The Community and Business Partnerships Manager gave a presentation on the Elevate City Deal. The key points were:

Colleges in the area had been very involved – East Berkshire College and the BCA. Other organisations that had been involved with the City Deal were Housing Solutions, Radian EST, Job Centre Plus, Grow Our Own, WAM Get Involved, Ways into Work and Directions
The aims of the project were to reduce the number of unemployed young people (16-24 years) not in employment, education or training, and those who were underemployed. It was a three year collaborative project across Berkshire, funded by a grant from Government for the first year and then Thames Valley Berkshire LEP (EUSIF) – the second and third year would be funded by European money.
The City Deal Key Principles were:
o to have an improved co-ordination of support services for young people through effective local partnership between partners and local businesses, increasing engagement and leavering-in resources.
o Co-location of IAG provision to provide improved outcomes for young people – bringing services together and co-ordinating activity already in place.
o Targeted outreach to groups who may be disengaged – reducing underemployment and underactivity. Giving young people the chance to progress.
o Young people have easy access to appropriate support, as a result of improved IAG
o Better use of data through community enterprise supported by the LEP.
o Which responds to local labour market conditions and adds value to local businesses – it was about what was the best outcome for individuals.
o Leads to integrated pathways of provision.
How Can the Community Partnership Board Help:
o Refer young people who were using your services into Elevate at the Nicholson’s Shopping Centre in Maidenhead or Elevate at East Berkshire College in Windsor.
o Direct young people using your service to the rbwm.elevateme.org.uk site – the site showed a map of iconic buildings which, when clicked on would list apprenticeships or other opportunities.
o Visit the team at the Maidenhead Hub in the Nicholson’s Centre and East Berkshire College in Windsor and see how it was possible to work together more closely.
o The Elevate City Deal fitted in with the Fire Service’s programme as well as with Grow Our Own.

The Chairman stated it created linkages between several groups. The Community and Business Partnerships Manager confirmed there was an age restriction of those that could be helped by the programme due to European Union funding rules ( 16 to 24 year olds). Lone-parents were a group that would be targeted. There was funding in place from government for the first year and then years two and three would be funding by Europe depending on the results and meeting targets during the first year.

Alison Alexander, the Strategic Director of Children's Services commented there was a slight duplication of work and it could be confusing. The Community and Business Partnerships Manager responded that it would not focus on the same client group as it was about reducing unemployment by 50% in the group. Andrew Davies stated it was excellent to have groups come together to help young people find employment. He was worried about the long term unemployed which also impacted on troubled families. The Community and Business Partnerships Manager replied the Job Centre Plus was best placed to explain the situation of the long term unemployed. However around 18,000 people in the Borough were economically inactive but only around 5,000 were actively looking for work. Some of those 18,000 were retired people. The City Deal would signpost those that wanted a job to the Grow Our Own Team who worked with other partners such as the Job Centre Plus. Geoff Bush, DWP confirmed there was very intensive support for the long term unemployed and work with the private sector to help. A gradual improvement in long term unemployed was being achieved. There were some people that were unemployable but, the Job Centre was seeing results in those that were employable. Christina Mora stated a lot of people were working needed a top-up benefit and the Citizen’s Advice Bureau were able to advise those people on that. Geoff Bush stated that once Universal Credit was introduced, the Job Centre would be looking at those on working benefits that could be earning more money or increasing their hours.

Action: an update from the Employment & Training Advisor on Employment and Skills to be added as an agenda item for the next meeting.

HEALTH AND WELLBEING – THE WIDER DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH

Naveed Mohammed, the Public Health Programme Manager gave a brief overview on the wider determinants of health outcomes framework. The key points included:

The document set out a range of measures to see how the Borough was improving and protecting health.
Helped residents hold the Local Authority to account.
Indicators included life expectancy rates.
Wider determinants of health painted a picture of how the Borough was doing.
The framework could be downloaded and read from www.phoutcomes.info
Overall the Borough did ok in health profile – it was an affluent Borough so was doing well.
The percentage of children in poverty in the borough was lower than the regional average.
Under 18 conception was lower than the national average.
Smoking rates were lower than the national average.
There were challenges in some areas in particular wards of the Borough.
Immunisation take-up was lower that regional peers (MMR for example).
40-75 year olds were eligible for health checks with a GP. However, the take-up of health checks was lower than it should be.
Social isolation – percentage of older population was higher than regional peers but the Council was doing work in this area working with employers and businesses.
Working with School Admission teams to work on raising the rate of childhood immunisations – given information packs to parents on immunising their children.
Loneliness project was ongoing.
There was a lot more to be done and the Public Health Programme Manager was seeking assistance from the Community Partnership Board to help get the work done.
Could deliver health checks in the community in places such as the local churches or places of worship.
Flu vaccine campaign running to target health care professionals, pregnant mothers and people with long term health problems.
Tackling myths associated with vaccines, such as myths associated with MMR and flu vaccines. Want to do more work as a Community Partnership group with the Health and Wellbeing team and he would be speaking to the Community Partnerships Co-Ordinator following the meeting.
Everything someone did in their daily life had a public health impact – the Public Health Programme Manager wanted to get a map of ongoing work to make sure the Public Health team were working efficiently and not duplicating work.
The Public Health Programme Manager was going to produce a simple survey for the Board to establish what groups were carrying out what work – he would circulate the document as soon as it was ready.

The Chairman stated he appreciated a health community touched on everything. Dave Phillips said he would talk to Naveed after the meeting to establish what the Fire Service could do to get involved. Christina Mora commented she was a borough resident and yet she did not know she was entitled to a free health check from her GP. The Public Health Programme Manager replied that the GP could not turn anyone away provided they met eligibility and the GP surgery was providing health checks. The scheme was being promoted in the Council’s Around the Royal Borough; word of mouth also worked as well as more traditional models of communication.

Action: For the Public Health Programme Manager to send out the outcomes framework document to Members of the community Partnership Board.

Action: The Head of Public Health & Community Partnerships Manager would meet to progress a survey of CPB members around the wider determinates of health to establish:

Which partners are currently engaging in addresses these locally
Which partners could make a contribution to address these
Identify missing partners able to contribute

ANY OTHER BUSINESS

Karnail Pannu stated that on the 22 October 2014, the Windsor and Maidenhead Community Foundation would be celebrating their 30^th anniversary.

Next Meeting

17 February 2015