Fairness and compassion: health & wellbeing in Sheffield
With the launch of the Health & Wellbeing Board’s new website, we are explaining what the Board does. A Board member will write a short piece after each meeting, reflecting on what the Board talked about and what really mattered to them. The first of these comes from Greg Fell, Sheffield’s Director of Public Health.
Hi everyone, I’m Greg and I’m the Director of Public Health for Sheffield City Council. I’m going to talk a bit about what we heard at September’s Health & Wellbeing Board meeting and what I thought about it – hope you find it interesting.
Your experience of health and care services
We always get an update from Healthwatch Sheffield – Judy Robinson is a long-time member of the Board and is great at telling us what people in Sheffield really think about health and care services. This time, she talked about work Healthwatch did with Sheffield Teaching Hospitals to promote support for Long Covid and about the difficulties people are having getting mental health support for children and young people.
We have good services for Long Covid in Sheffield, but not enough people know about them. Healthwatch has worked hard to change this and they’ve done a really good job.
When it comes to mental health for young people, it’s been a problem for a long time, not just in Sheffield but all over. Organisations in Sheffield are working on it, but I think we also need to think about what’s causing these problems and how to fix them, not just about treatment.
Better Care Fund
As well as hearing from Healthwatch, we always get an update on the Better Care Fund. This is a big pot of money that the council and the NHS in Sheffield both contribute to, used to help them work together better. We do a lot of good work with this money, and broadly we meet the targets the Government sets for us (whether the targets are right is a different question!).
Fair and Healthy Sheffield Plan
The big item this time was our new Fair and Healthy Sheffield Plan. You can read more about this online – I’m really happy with how it’s turned out. Now we need to take action. My team and I, along with others on the Board, will be out talking about the Plan in the next few months. We need everyone to help improve health and wellbeing in Sheffield, and we’ll be working hard to make sure we do what we’ve promised.
Compassionate Sheffield
The Plan might have been the big item, but the one I was blown away by was the presentation on the work of the Compassionate Sheffield team. This project started in 2019 to help people in Sheffield have a good death in a place of their choice. The team has done amazing work with only small amounts of money. They’ve helped us think about how we support everyone affected by death, using the strength of our communities.
But it’s also been hard to do this new work without much money. The team doesn’t always know if there will be funding in the future. They’ve still done a great job, but we’ve learned that sometimes, when trying something new, we won’t have all the proof we want to show it will work. We just have to believe it’s the right thing to do.
Being open and honest
We also heard from Gavin Boyle, the Chief Executive of NHS South Yorkshire, about how things are going since the big changes to the NHS in 2022. He was very open and willing to be held to account, which is great. Two things stood out to me in our conversation.
First, when my fellow board member Megan Ohri asked if more future funding could go to voluntary organisations, Gavin said, “absolutely.” This is good because we know that voluntary sector organisations are so important in creating health in communities.
Second, Leigh Sorsbie pointed out that while we say most health outcomes aren’t about healthcare, that changes when people are ill. We usually say about 20% of health is about healthcare, but when people are sick, it’s more like 50%. This means it’s really important to look at inequalities in healthcare. The Board will be working on this next year.
Director of Public Health Report
Finally, I shared my Director of Public Health report for 2023. It’s about what we learned from the pandemic and how we need to prepare for the next one (because there will be another one, even though we don’t know when). Public services are short of money and people, so it’s hard to fit this in, but it’s really important to learn from the past. You can find my report in the papers for the meeting.
I hope that’s been interesting. We really want more people to get involved with the work of the Board, so if you are interested please ask us questions, or come along to a meeting or one of the events we’ll be running over the next year. Most importantly, challenge us to live up to our promises!