VCS Rep Report : ICS Quality, Performance and Finance Committee 25/11/22
Meeting attended: Quality, Performance and Finance Committee
VCS Representatives: Rachel Talbot
Date of meeting: 25/11/2022
Summary of agenda items / key themes discussed:
Almost impossible to summarise 3 – 4-hour meeting with yet again 100s of pages of papers.
Seems that we are not doing to badly in our area compared with national in general but there is a problem with the support to children/people with mental health/learning disability. No surprise but the committee is taking the learning Disability Death review as a key issue to look at again. It seems that death rates are high and partly to do with lack of understanding how to communicate – both to individuals and helping people with learning disabilities understand health issues – this was clearly demonstrated during Covid (I think HealthWatch are going to raise some sort of formal point about this. You can get more from Sandie)
Finance: Are underspent (now in “amber”) but mostly around not being able to recruit new staff although they have 8% more staff than last year. (I could not understand what was being said about them having rules to get authorisation for anything over £50k. Not sure if it holds things up. Seems a very small number for buying health things!)
Other issues (too many to put here – but in summary):
Diagnostics and unplanned care “deep dive” report – still seem to be delays beyond target (partly the impact of knock on of covid). Sandie asking for better comms to people/public to explain what the cause of the delays are
Health and well being for asylum seekers trying to get GP access (mostly P’boro)
Working together – Interface between Health and care sector – V short report (the rest of the reports were all very detailed and long!). Dr Katherine Rowe reported that they had had some stake holder meetings.
Occupancy rates at hospital V high and C Diff rates bad because they cannot get the cleaning staff
Implications for the VCS
Think that Healthwatch will be asking for help with feedback/case studies on experiences of people with mental health issues and primary care.
Actions
Need to think about the fact that Sandie Smith is leaving. Will her successor take over? She makes a big contribution.
I am not sure what I can add except listening and get depressed about the state of the system. It is a massive learning curve and V difficult understanding the lingo.
Date, time and venue of next meeting and name of the representative who will be attending
27-1-23 – Rachel Talbot
