To understand the priorities and principles of the plan and how these will be delivered by the council.

Reporting officer: Pauline Peters – Senior Transformation Lead, Children and Young People

Pauline Peters, Senior Transformation Lead for Children and Young People, gave some context on the creation of the plan. In July 2022, system partners came together to discuss how priorities could be aligned. Around 17 organisations took part in the workshop with around 60 delegates. Feedback from frontline staff had been gathered to guide discussion. Four task and transition groups had been formed around leadership and strategy, building connectivity, remove the need for labels to access support and proactive not reactive. Five priority areas were identified and these were supported by a number of overarching principles:

• The first priority was to be healthy, ensuring that children and young people could enjoy good physical and mental health and live a healthy lifestyle.
• The second priority was to be safe, to allow children and young people to be protected from harm and neglect and grow up being able to look after themselves.
• The third priority was to be skilled, to encourage children and young people to get the most out of life and develop skills for adulthood.
• The fourth priority was to be financially secure, to equip children and young people to overcome socio-economic disadvantages so that they could achieve their full potential in life and enjoy economic wellbeing.
• The fifth priority was to be heard, allowing children and young people to feel listened to, take their views into account and involve them directly when looking to design or improve services.

Pauline Peters shared a video with the Board which had been created by young people visually explaining the plan.

The Chair highlighted that the fifth priority was already being delivered, as children and young people had been involved in the development of the plan. She asked if the plan could be considered by the People Overview and Scrutiny Panel.

ACTION – Children and Young People’s Plan to be referred to the People Overview and Scrutiny Panel for consideration at a future meeting.

Stephen Dunn, Director of System Delivery and Flow and Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, said that the plan embodied the change in culture that was being aimed for. He presumed that there would be an action plan to follow up the work in the plan. Stephen Dunn asked which areas of the plan would provide the most significant difference and benefit from Board support.

Pauline Peters highlighted that the connected care platform could be utilised and this would ensure that children did not slip through the net as a result of data being appropriately shared across various sectors. The plan was designed to encourage organisations to consider how they could work collaboratively together, particularly at an earlier stage. Investing in preventive resources could prevent a bottleneck situation in terms of accessing more specialist services. The child needed to be kept at the centre of the focus to achieve the best results.

Kevin McDaniel, Executive Director of Adult Services and Health, said that his understanding of connected care was around patients and data. He questioned whether educational data could be made available in this way.

Pauline Peters confirmed that connected care was focused on patient data. Exploration around the inclusion of other data sources would be an innovative and useful approach to consider.

The Chair said that she was keen for actions to come out of meetings to improve how things were done. Referring the item to the People Overview and Scrutiny Panel could allow Panel Members to take a deep dive into the plan and consider if there were any recommendations that could be made to Cabinet.

Stephen Dunn suggested that information on the partner organisations could be shared to improve the utilisation of connected care. An action plan could be considered by the Board at a future meeting.

ACTION – Pauline Peters to share organisation information with Stephen Dunn and Kevin McDaniel, who would consider how these organisations could use connected care.

ACTION – Children and Young People’s Plan action plan to be considered by the Health and Wellbeing Board at a future meeting.

Pauline Peters mentioned that a postvention protocol would be developed over the next few months and would fall within the ‘be safe’ priority area. Jonas Thompson-McCormick, Head of Public Health at RBWM, said that there was an agreement between the public health team and Achieving for Children that there would be a task and finish group to consider the protocol to follow should the suicide of a young person occur. An update could be provided at the October Board meeting.

ACTION – Update on the work of the task and finish group to be considered at the next meeting of the Health and Wellbeing Board in October.