Attendees
Iona Lidington, Convenor and Public Health Lead
Jo Farrar, Executive Lead for the NHS in Kingston and Richmond.
Jennifer Allan, Mental Health Lead
Tony Bennett, Chief Executive, Kingston Carers’ Network
Alison Danks, Associate Director of Health Services, Achieving for Children
Sanja Djeric Kane, Voluntary Sector Lead
Tara Ferguson-Jones, Communications and Engagement Lead
Sue Lear, Transformation, NHS South West London ICB
Nick Merrifield, Primary Care Development Lead
Ed Montgomery, NHS Community Lead
Sam Morrison, Assistant Director, Adult Social Care, Health Commissioning and Transformation, Royal Borough of Kingston
Sam Morrison, Assistant Director, Adult Social Care, Health Commissioning and Transformation, Royal Borough of Kingston
Ashley Whittaker, Programme Director, Achieving for Children
Transformation
SEND Future Plans
The SEND Futures Plan is Kingston’s strategic plan to improve outcomes for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities between the ages of 0 and 25 years, and their families.
The number of children and young people presenting with additional needs is increasing significantly. The committee is very grateful to Kingston’s SEND Parent Carer Forum for the work they have done during the summer term to collect the opinions of families about SEND services in Kingston. Findings will be published in the autumn alongside a draft updated SEND Futures Plan.
A new Designated Social Care Officer for SEND will begin work at the start of
August and an advert for a new permanent Designated Clinical Officer for SEND is currently live. These will both be very welcome additions to the local SEND Team.
Waiting times for a number of services are longer than the team would like them to be. An increase in the number of children requiring additional support, combined with inflation in the wider economy, is making the financial situation very challenging. In addition, Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission are now inspecting local area’s SEND arrangements under a new framework. Kingston was last inspected in September 2018 and so preparations are underway for further inspection of our services.
The Committee noted the progress which has been made with implementing the SEND Futures Plan, including performance against the Safety Valve Agreement.
Outputs and actions from the Integrated Neighbourhood Teams workshop
The committee discussed the outputs from the recent Integrated Neighbourhood Teams workshop, held jointly with Place Partners in June.
Integrated Neighbourhood Teams aim to improve coordination and communication between health (including GPs), social care and other partners. The committee considered the commonalities between the two boroughs, how this work could be shared with stakeholders as a model of care and how best to carry out engagement with primary care networks as well as wider community care networks.
The committee also considered how this work could link with the PAC project and other existing initiatives.
The next steps are:
• A lead for the work programme will be agreed.
• This work will be mapped against other existing work programmes – to avoid duplication and ensure we are making best use of our resources.
• The workplan will be developed and there will be engagement with all partners before we proceed with setting up our integrated neighbourhood teams.
Better Together update
Jo Farrar gave an update on the Better Together programme. Since 2021, Kingston Hospital and Hounslow and Richmond Community Healthcare (including Your Healthcare) have been working together more closely to improve the way care is delivered, working in a more integrated way. This programme of work is called Better Together.
The leadership teams of Kingston Hospital and HRCH have come together as one, and their boards have also come together in what is called a Committee in Common (i.e. a joint board.) Your Healthcare’s leadership team has been involved in these discussions and in the partnership.
Colleagues at HRCH and Kingston Hospital have seen improvements in staff and patient experience as a result of this developing partnership. With the support of NHS England and the SW London Integrated Care System, the Trusts have been discussing what more they can do to bring more teams together across the hospital and the community to further improve care.
To that end, a piece of work is underway, called a strategic outline case, reviewing the relationship between Kingston Hospital and HRCH; including the option of a merger.
No decisions have yet been taken. Should we proceed with a merger we will be running an extensive piece of public, patient and partner engagement, so further updates will be brought to the place committee.
In other parts of the country where organisations have come together in this way, the results have included reduced hospital stays and more people able to maintain their independence at home.
Jo Farrar also highlighted the partnership principles which were agreed to guide the work we are doing through the Better together partnership.
Test of any change: It benefits patients or our population, builds resilience and has value for money.
Parity of esteem: Equal voice for acute and community services, where there is consensual approach to reaching shared decisions.
Drivers of our collective activity would enrich staff, broaden their experiences, and support innovation.
Patients and staff are actively engaged in shaping and informing our collaborative work.
Operating model supports Place and local delivery, and helps patients move seamlessly between primary, community and acute care.
Empower our staff to make improvements at scale and pace.
Streamline governance to empower staff.
Where economies of scale are sought, these would be co-designed (i.e. no asset stripping).
Quality and performance
Place metrics
A new report showing place metrics for Kingston for month one was shared with members.
Key issues to note:
• Kingston continues to be below the target for access to talking therapies but the
recovery rate from receiving talking therapies is above the target.
• Kingston is below the target for dementia diagnosis.
• The data reflects the pressure seen in the system for emergency admissions and a
drop in the number of elective spells.
The committee noted the report and has asked to see the report on a quarterly basis going forward.
Communications and engagement
Tara Ferguson Jones updated on the next People and Communities Engagement Assurance reports that are due in early August and will summarise our engagement activity between April and July.
Across Kingston and Richmond we have completed a piece of work which has contributed to the engagement for the SWL Joint Forward Plan. We were engaging where gaps were identified in the insight reports partners also shared, and in K&R we were focusing on the learning disability and autism chapter. Engaging to check that the views of local people and communities reflected what they thought, and the ambitions identified were the right ones.
To that end we attended the K&R All Age Disability Partnership Board to ask them how best to do this. The outcome was a focus group with Eco-op in Kingston using an easy read version with 16 people with learning disabilities. In Richmond we took part in a mental health event for secondary schools and spoke to over 20 young people about the mental health and learning disability/autism chapters. Views were fed into the final version of the SWL Joint Forward Plan.
We have also given support with a review of autism /ADHD pathway – supporting engagement on this through a survey and focus groups.
Our engagement outreach programme seeking views on local health services has continued, and in recent weeks we have focused on sharing messages on industrial action and the heatwave – both through comms channels and through our community networks.
We now have generic voice notes recorded in different languages including Korean to help with our messaging locally. Feedback from groups is they appreciate these messages and are sharing them on.
Date of next meeting – 15 August 2023