Agenda and minutes

County Councillor J. Pratt was elected as Chair.

None.

No matters for the public open forum.

Context:

To provide the committee with an update on the steps being delivered as part Monmouthshire’s Well-being Plan.

Key Issues:

The Well-being of Future Generations Act aims to ensure that public bodies think more about the long term, work better with people and communities and each other, look to prevent problems and take a more joined-up approach. Each Public Service Board must prepare and publish a local well-being plan setting out its local objectives and the steps it proposes to take to meet them.

The PSB has approved four well-being objectives that underpin a clear purpose of building sustainable and resilient communities and is now developing the activity that will contribute to thedelivery of these. Each partner has assumed responsibility for delivering the activity whichincludes holding workshops and involving other partners, organisations and community groups.These are set out in appendix one. The measures shown against each of these are largelydrawn from the 46 national well-being measures that were developed alongside The Act. Thesewill be supplemented by local measures as the work develops.

Delivering the steps is being done in an integrated way as there are clear synergies between them. Some of the relationships between the steps are shown in appendix 2. The matrix in appendix 2 demonstrates how the steps (summarised on the axis) will impact on each other, with the most significant impacts shaded in blue, this integration will need to continue to be reviewed as the action to address each step is developed.

Lead partners for some steps are still exploring potential solutions and the picture continues to evolve. For example, on Monday 1st October a workshop was held with partners exploring issues around preventing harm as a result of adverse childhood experiences, or ACES.

Member Scrutiny:

A Member referred to the recommendation and stated that as the only body to scrutinise the Public Service Board, the recommendation should be strengthened to state that the Select Committee will ask representatives of other agencies to attend meetings.  He also asked if there is anything that ensures other agencies take notice of what is said and deliberated at the scrutiny meetings.

The Policy and Performance Manager agreed with the comment and would check the wording of the recommendation.

The Scrutiny Manager took the opportunity to highlight the terms of reference of the Committee, which includes actual powers which are to review or scrutinise decisions made, or actions taken by the PSB; to review or scrutinise the Board’s governance arrangements; to make reports or recommendations to the board regarding its functions or governance arrangements.  From this it is clear that partners would need to be accountable and to do so they would need to be present.

Therefore, the recommendation was amended to read:

Members of the committee are invited to scrutinise the activity being prioritised and delivered and may identify any of these areas for further scrutiny as part of its work programme. It will ask for the attendance from any partner within the PSB  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

The Chair welcomed Chief Inspector Richard Blakemore, and Charlotte Drury, Service Manager - Well-being Family Support & Safeguarding.

Context:

To provide PSB Select Committee with an overview of the work that the public service board will develop to begin to address and mitigate the impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) on long-term outcomes/wellbeing.

Key Issues:

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are potentially traumatic events that can have negative, lasting effects on health and well-being. These experiences range from physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, to parental divorce or the incarceration of a parent or guardian. The ACEs research tells us is that these adverse experiences are likely to have a significant impact on health-harming behaviours (such as problematic drug or alcohol use), mental health and chronic disease throughout adulthood. Clearly for a child to experience a single ACE is unwelcome, however, what the evidence shows is that children who experience fewer than four ACEs are more resilient to the long-term impact. There is a moral as well as a financial imperative therefore to work to limit as far as possible the ACEs children are exposed to and to mitigate the impact of ACES that they do experience.

There is a multitude of reasons why children become exposed to ACEs and many of these reasons will be interrelated. Incarceration is linked with poor education, poor education is linked with poverty, and poverty is linked to a higher incidence of involvement with social care, and so on. Experiencing ACEs makes an adult more likely to raise children in environments where they too experience ACEs. Mitigating the impact of ACEs is, therefore, an essential element within an ACE reduction strategy.

Attempting to identify simple solutions to such a complex set of problems is impossible. What is possible however is a consideration of those factors that agencies and services have influence over in order to collectively create an environment conducive to whole systems change. This will require us to think differently; away from a model where we assume that we can control outcomes and towards a model that seeks to identify key points of influence, where small changes can create a difference.

We are doing lots already, much driven by a statutory imperative. The focus of partnerships should be on achieving difference at a policy, planning and implementation level, including consideration of existing and new activity. Since ACEs are a complex issue, it will be important to focus on those factors where partners have most control/influence and those where there is evidence that intervention will make the most difference whilst accepting that not everything can be a priority.

To assist with this the Cymru Well Wales, Adverse Childhood Experiences’ Support Hub facilitated a session at the Programme Board meeting on the 1^st October 2018. The session provided an introduction to ACEs and the evidence base and a forum for starting to consider what a Monmouthshire response to mitigating and preventing

ACEs might look like (details included in Appendix 1).

Member scrutiny:

A Member commented that this  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

Context:

The Policy and Performance Manager presented a report to provide a brief update about work being undertaken at a Gwent regional level to build on well-being assessments and inform well-being plans.

Key Issues:

Officers representing the five Public Service Boards in Gwent have been meeting in the Gwent Wide Strategic Well-being Assessment Group (GSWAG) to share learning and identify opportunities to collaborate on areas of common interest. This work initially focused on the development of the well-being assessment and has continued to strengthen the development and implementation of well-being plans.

In 2017/18 Welsh Government made available £74,026 of funding for the five PSBs in the Gwent area to build on work completed as part of the well-being assessments and help build towards the development of the well-being plan. The Welsh Government has made available a further £74,026 of funding for the five PSBs in the Gwent area for 2018/19. Officers on the Gwent wide group are currently developing projects to utilise this funding for 2018/19. Newport are acting as the lead organisation in the process this year. A brief update on the progress with projects as part of this regional work is provided below.

Member Scrutiny:

A Member asked if there is an officer commitment as well as a political one

With reference to a question on collaborative working we heard that although there are some thing that are pertinent to Monmouthshire, for example rural transport, there are areas where we work with authorities Gwent wide, for example a feasibility study for electric car charging points.  Where it makes sense to work collaboratively Officers are keen to combine resources.

With regards to the ‘Happiness Pulse’, 1100 residents had completed the responded to the survey, and 400 Council staff. 

Recommendation:

Members are invited to use this update to enhance their understanding of how regional working can help the Public Service Board (PSB) meet the requirements of The Act.

Committee Conclusion:

The Committee thanked officers and resolved to accept the recommendation.

The minutes of the meeting of Public Service Board Select Committee held on 4^th July were confirmed and signed by the Chair.

The Scrutiny Manager is to meet with colleagues to discuss items for the forward work programme.

Noted.