Cllr Phil Gilchrist asks a question at Wirral Council’s Health and Wellbeing Board (10th July 2013)

Cllr Phil Davies: “So well done Eric” [Pickles]

Playlist of Health and Wellbeing Board (10th July 2013)

The meeting was held in the rather cramped Committee Room 2 (which has been made even smaller by the recent building work) on a very hot Summer afternoon. Cllr Phil Davies started the meeting by asking people to introduce themselves (everyone had a nameplate though). So those that were there introduced themselves which included Cllr Phil Davies, Claire Fish, Julia Hassall, Chris Begya, Sue Green, Cllr Chris Meaden, Julie Webster, Cllr Phil Gilchrist, Annette Roberts, Dr. Abhi Mantgani (who complained that his name was misspelt on his nameplate), Fiona Johnstone and various others.

There were apologies given for Graham Hodkinson, Cllr Jeff Green, Cllr Tony Smith and various others. No declarations of interest were made and the minutes of the previous meeting were agreed.

The first main item was a demonstration of Puffell. Although the agenda showed that the presentation would be given by Dr Jennings and Mr. Jackson, the presentation was given by people from Ice Creates Ltd, who gave a (yes I’m sure you can guess already) Powerpoint presentation about Puffell. One of the interesting things they did say was that in their market research they’d found people had a “distrust of local authorities and government”, which was why “you won’t see a local authority name on Puffell”. The rest of their talk basically seemed to be a sales pitch. They told the audience that since its launch twenty-five days earlier, 622 users had registered on Puffell, 224 were following them on Facebook and 131 following on Twitter (just for comparison I currently have 361 followers on Twitter). They also went into the demographics of who was using it, as well as their aims (convincing people to reduce their alcohol intake, cut down on smoking etc).

There was a question asked about their use of the Wirral Well database, they said they used it when people searched for things but the website was only a tiny bit of Wirral Well. Another of the board said they were working with Ice Creates Ltd and were “quite excited by it”. Someone else asked about accessibility issues for patients with disabilities such as arthritis, which they said they were working on. He also asked about how they were measuring their outcomes and was told that they have the ability to track behaviour change, such as a patient losing weight. Cllr Phil Davies asked about those on the Wirral that don’t access the internet and was told they could access the internet at the libraries or on their mobile phones. He also asked if they collected postcode data and was told they did.

The meeting then moved onto a report on Budget transfers section 256, which had two additional documents, 5AA and 5B. Unfortunately at this point the building work starting making a racket right outside Committee Room 2 and due to there being no microphones, it was very difficult to hear what Dr. Abhi Mantgani was saying. His report was about joint working between the Clinical Commissioning Group and Wirral Council in the area of social care (such as community equipment and adaptions, telecare, crisis response services, meeting increased demand etc). The amount allocated to Wirral for this for 2013/14 was ~£6.4 million and the Health and Wellbeing Board was being asked to give its support to the proposals. Dr. Mantgani said that one of the uses of the money would be to facilitate discharge of patients so that people could manage their health conditions in their own homes.

Cllr Gilchrist asked about how many numbers of people would be helped by the money? Cllr Phil Davies asked if it was new money and was told no. Other people commented on and discussed this item.

Item six was on the 2013 Spending Review and its appendix. Claire Fish briefly introduced this item, Cllr Phil Davies asked how the money would be accessed and was told they were waiting for more guidance on that by both Dr. Mantgani and Fiona Johnstone. Cllr Gilchrist also asked a question on this item about changes to hospital discharge.

Cllr Phil Davies wanted a written vision of an integrated health and social care system to which Dr. Mantgani replied it was “not something you write on the back of a fag packet” and would require a “lot of work to be done”. After some more discussion the Health and Wellbeing Board moved to the next item on the Long Term Conditions Integration Programme and its appendix. The Health and Wellbeing Board was told of the Pioneer Bid (which was later on the agenda at item 14. Cllr Phil Davies asked a number of questions on this item and referred to the recent LGA Conference, where Wirral had been one of a number of authorities chosen to take part in a pilot of community budgets, which included health and social care integration. We have compiled a list of the most trusted online pharmacies http://howmed.net/cialis-generic/ for buying generic Cialis based on hundreds of customer reviews.

Cllr Gilchrist asked a question about case reviews and was referred to pages forty-four and forty-nine in the report. Cllr Phil Davies finished the item by saying, “I mean the thing about the community budgets pilot as well is again there’s no money attached to that, but it’s just that the good thing at the conference, coz it was about the only good thing that Eric Pickles I think that said errm, was it just it just gave you that national recognition err which is good for Wirral to have that to have that. We were the only one in the North West, the only Council in the North West that got included in the pilot, so that’s really good. So well done Eric. Right OK, let’s move swiftly on.” which was followed by laughter and Dr. Mantgani saying, “It’s going to appear on Youtube.”

At this point, although there were another nine items on the agenda, unfortunately I had to leave to go to a meeting of the Regeneration and Environment Policy and Performance Committee.