Agenda and minutes

Venue: This will be a virtual meeting. A meeting link will be circulated to attendees in advance

Contact: Maria Lugangira, Principal Constitutional Officer Email: maria.lugangira@southwark.gov.uk 

Items
No. Item

1.

Welcome and Introductions

    • Share this item

    Minutes:

    In the absence of the Chair and Vice-Chair, Councillor Evelyn Akoto Cabinet Member for Health and Wellbeing Chaired and welcomed everyone to the meeting.

     

2.

Apologies

    • Share this item

    To receive any apologies for absence.

    Minutes:

    Advance apologies have been received from:

    -  Cllr Williams

    -  Cllr Jasmine Ali

    -  Eleanor Kelly

    -  Dr Nancy Kucheman

    -  David Quirke-Thornton

     

3.

Confirmation of Voting Members

    • Share this item

    Voting members of the committee to be confirmed at this point in the meeting.

    Minutes:

    Those listed as present were confirmed as the voting members of the meeting.

     

4.

Notification of any items of business which the chair deems urgent

    • Share this item

    In special circumstances, an item of business may be added to an agenda within five clear days of the meeting.

    Minutes:

    There was none.

     

5.

Disclosure of interests and dispensations

    • Share this item

    Members of the Board to declare any interests and dispensation in respect of any item of business to be considered at this meeting.

    Minutes:

    There were none.

     

6.

Minutes

    • Share this item

    To agree as a correct record the open minutes of the meeting held on 23 September 2021..

    Supporting documents:

    Minutes:

    RESOLVED - That the minutes of the meeting held on 23 September 2021, be approved as a correct record of the meeting.

     

7.

Southwark Joint Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2021-24

    • Share this item

    Supporting documents:

    Minutes:

    Genette Laws, Director of Commissioning, Children’s and Adults’ Services, Southwark Council introduced the item. She explained that the Strategy’s development had been led by the Healthy Populations Team with input from a Task & Finish Group established for this purpose with representation from across borough health and social care providers and/or stakeholders.

     

    She further explained the purpose of the Strategy was to achieve national and local policy imperatives and promote the mental health of residents by improving the range and access to services and delivering good outcomes and value for money by reducing stigma and building confidence in services. It was pointed out to the Board that there was a particular focus on addressing inequity of access and over-representation of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities in relation to mental health services.

     

    16 priority areas/workstreams had been identified for delivery in the Strategy and that its implementation would be overseen by a Joint Mental Health and Wellbeing Delivery Oversight Group with representation from all key stakeholders. The group would support delivery of work plans with an emphasis on workforce development and engagement and co-design of planned interventions. The Group’s Terms of Reference and membership had been agreed and meetings would commence November 2021.

     

    Resolved - The Health and Wellbeing Board;

     

    1.  Commented on and endorsed the Southwark Joint Mental Health Strategy 2021-24 and priorities for action highlighted within it.

     

    2.  Reviewed and endorsed arrangements for implementation of the Southwark Joint Mental Health Strategy 2021-24 through the Mental Health and Wellbeing Delivery Oversight Group, its membership and terms of reference.

     

    3.  Noted that a plain English version of the strategy with case studies/pen pictures that describe how the strategy will change the lives of residents in the borough.

     

8.

Vaccination Update

    • Share this item

    To receive an update at the meeting.

Minutes:

Sam Hepplewhite - Placed Based Director (Southwark), NHS SE London CCG provided a brief overview of the vaccination programme. 

 

Schools

She explained Southwark was currently a third of the way through their 12-15 school programme, which had mainly been delivered in schools, with a supplementary offer to 12-15 year olds and their parents who cannot access that service. Each school would receive at least one visit and was mandated to use the school vaccination provider, which was Hounslow and Richmond Trust and who currently provide flu vaccination to schools. They would visit every school in Southwark with the agreement of that school i.e agreed time and date. Every child that was to be vaccinated would need to have the consent of either their parent/guardian. The provider would also be trained to go through the Gillick competencies with those individuals who would like to be vaccinated but did not have consent from their parents/guardian.

 

For those individuals who for whatever reason could not be in school on vaccination day there would be supplementary offer which included Guys and St Thomas Trust in Southwark with dedicated pods that had been aligned for children available after school and on Saturdays and Sundays. There would also be slots available at Primary Care in general practice to book on grab a jab website and South East London website that had details.

 

With regards to community pharmacies being able to delivery vaccinations to 12-15 year olds there were still a number of restrictions. Across South East London, no pharmacies as yet had been approved to deliver this.   

 

Booster Campaign

With regards to the booster campaign as many sites as possible were being made available to enable people to access this service. This included vaccination centres, PCNs, General Practice and the community pharmacy, which had had good coverage around boosters. The arrangement for supply had changed in that for the second phase sites could pull down the vaccine rather than waiting for the delivery. Therefore, each site received a certain amount of vaccine they’d specified they would like and pulled down from that.

 

In summary, the booster campaign was going well and needed to ensure people were notified as soon as they became eligible and could easily access the vaccine.

 

Evergreen offer

This offer was ongoing and aimed at anybody who hadn’t had either their first or second vaccine being encouraged to come forward. It is understood that there would be a boost campaign at local and national level around communications for this to encourage that uptake and access the service.

 

With regards to the data Sam explained it currently was not complete as there had been a problem around the reporting through of all the vaccine that were being given from Guys St Thomas Trust. Once the updated information had been received, it would be shared with the Board.

9.

COVID-19 Update

    • Share this item

    To receive an up at the meeting.

Minutes:

Chris Williamson, Head of Public Health Intelligence presented the item.

 

With regards to headline messaging he explained there had been a slight decrease of confirmed cases in the borough over the past week but that infection levels remained high, with Southwark having 537 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the week up to 26 October.

 

With regards to hospital pressures, numbers were slowly increasing across London with continually increasing levels nationally. Across London, there were

around 1000 Covid in patients with 180 of these being in critical care.

 

With regards to vaccination, there’d been a slow increase across both 1st and 2nd doses, the coverage being just short of two thirds of adults age 16 and over for the 1st dose and 60% for those with their 2nd dose. Over 22,000 booster doses had been delivered to the eligible population.

 

With regards to demographics, cases had slightly decreased in most age groups over the past week but infection levels remained high, with highest level in the under 18s. Infection levels in the over 60s remained relatively low.

 

With regards to the in patients with COVID-19 at local hospital trusts the number was stable. Bed occupancy for patients confirmed with Covid-19 at both Guys St Thomas Trust (GSTT) and Kings College Hospital, Denmark Hill (KCH-DT) had slightly decreased in recent weeks, with 28 patients at GSTT and 37 patients  at KCH-DH. Nationally the number of COVID-19 patients in hospital continued to increase

 

With regards to vaccination coverage 65% of those aged 16 and over had received their first dose of the COVID vaccine, with 60% having received two-dose vaccination.

In terms of ethnicity-related numbers, vaccination inequalities persisted with less than 50% of Black Caribbean residents being vaccinated. This vaccination inequity showed similar patterns for both dose-one and dose-two coverage, with little change in recent months. This was a similar inequality pattern seen across London between ethnic minority groups.

 

In terms of horizon scanning, four models had been produced by academic research teams to show hospital admission rates over Autumn/ Winter and they indicated much lower levels compared to January 2021.In terms of case these remained high across London, with the R number between 1.0 and 1.2.

10.

Update on Lateral Flow Device (LFD) Testing in Southwark (Rapid Antigen Test)

    • Share this item

    Supporting documents:

    Minutes:

    Paul Stokes, Head of Programme - Health Improvement introduced the item. He explained that lateral flow testing had been taking place in Southwark since January, with three essential supervised testing sites in (i) the north of the borough (London Bridge Station), (ii) centre of the borough (Bournemouth Road, Peckham), and (iii) a Mobile Test Unit (which rotated to town centres for eg. Peckham Square, Camberwell Green, Elephant & Castle, and to housing estates).

     

    In addition to the above, there was also the following in place:

    ·  Community Collection points, whereby testing kits were being distributed through libraries and pharmacies and could be collected for people to carry out self-swabs at home

    ·  Door Drop: the Southwark Young Advisors targeted neighbourhoods with a door drop of self-swab LFD test kits informed by the Surveillance Reports provided by the Public Health Intelligence Team. These could be areas of higher transmission, lower vaccination take up or other risk factors (eg higher levels of poor health and wellbeing). The Council was also able to respond to requests for a ‘drop’ of rapid LFD test kits from key organisations (such as universities, schools or ‘at risk’ businesses’) in response to outbreak management.

     

    He added that the whole of Lateral Flow Testing system was there to support the PCR testing. The PCR test sites in Southwark were located at:

    ·  Burgess Park Car Park – 7 days

    ·  Bel Air Park Car Park – 7 days

    ·  Elephant & Castle Walworth Square – mobile

    ·  Canada Water – Deal Porter Square - mobile

     

    He further explained that the PCR testing system was governed and organised by the Department of Health and they had indicated that longer term the programme would keep rolling out until winter next year. In terms of the Lateral Flow Testing, it had been indicated that the current system would keep going until March 2022. The funding provided to the Southwark to fund that system was confirmed on a 3-month basis.

     

    RESOLVED – That the Health and Wellbeing Board noted the report.

     

11.

Any other business

    • Share this item

    Minutes:

    There was none.

12.

Next Meeting

    • Share this item

    10 January 2022

    Minutes:

    Councillor Akoto informed that Board that the next meeting of the HWBB scheduled for Thursday 10 January would be rescheduled to accommodate deadlines falling over the Christmas break.