Cllr Lucia das Neves, Cabinet Member for Health, Social Care and
Well-being, responded to questions from the Panel on issues related
to her portfolio:
- Cllr Brennan
expressed concerns about the need to make budget savings across the
Council and asked how this would be approached in adult social care
given the demand pressures on services. Cllr das Neves said that local authorities across the
country were deeply frustrated by the Government’s refusal to
look at systematic change and properly fund services. There were
also issues around workforce and the availability of placements.
She acknowledged that these were challenging times, that the
Department would work hard to support residents and deliver
effective services, and that there would be a detailed discussion
session held with Members about the Council’s
approach.
- Cllr Iyngkaran requested an update on mental health
services at Canning Crescent. Cllr das Neves said that the services were currently being
delivered in the way that they had previously been delivered, as
opposed to the original vision of bringing the services all
together. She added that the Council had been significantly let
down by the contractor and was now picking up the pieces. Over the
summer they had gone out to a range of contractors with plans and
proposals being developed, but the project was now significantly
delayed. Cllr das Neves said that the
Council would need to consider whether there was anything that
could have been done differently in the procurement
process.
- Asked by Cllr
O’Donovan about the Council’s overall long-term vision
for health, Cllr das Neves spoke about
the importance of prioritising early intervention and prevention
while also delivering core services. She added that it was
necessary to bring this to every space with a focus on inclusion,
health inequalities and working closely with local
community/voluntary groups and the wider community through
coproduction. These themes would be included in the Health and
Wellbeing Strategy, which was shortly due to be renewed to provide
a platform for this work over the next 10 years. It would also be
important to overlay health and wellbeing in everything that the
Council did, including housing and education.
- Helena Kania highlighted difficulties that residents often
experienced with the NHS, for example in using digital services or
gaining access to flu/Covid
vaccinations, and asked what more the Council could do to support
Haringey residents. Cllr das Neves
responded that she advocated for residents on these and other
issues in multi-agency forums such as Health and Wellbeing Board
which she chaired, based on feedback from the local community. Will
Maimaris, Director for Public Health,
said that flu vaccinations were available in pharmacies and GP
practices across the borough, but that more certainty needed to be
provided locally on Covid vaccinations
and that this would be progressed shortly through discussions at
the Health and Wellbeing Board. The NCL ICB was leading on the
roll-out, but the Public Health team would be working closely with
the ICB and the GP Federation. Helena Kania commented that residents needed to have easy
access to this information. Cllr das Neves acknowledged that communication with
residents about access to various services was a regular area of
discussion at the Health and Wellbeing Board and other forums. She
also highlighted the practical issues caused by the
Government’s recent decision to bring Covid vaccinations forward.
- Cllr Connor
highlighted issues with Member enquiries relating to adult social
care and asked if the communications with Members and residents
could be improved as it was sometimes necessary to make multiple
enquiries to ascertain whether an issue had been resolved. Cllr das
Neves acknowledged that improvements
were needed to the service, including on the technology used to
support it, but noted that a lot of enquiries had recently been
cleared. Vicky Murphy added that the way that complaints were
managed had been redesigned to ensure that they were followed
through in a timely manner, but that there was still a lot of work
to do on the digital platform to support this work. She added that
a separate system had been created to deal with cases where a
resident wanted to raise an issue without making a
complaint.
- Asked by Cllr Connor
about progress on co-production and how this was being communicated
to residents, Cllr das Neves
acknowledged that this was a huge learning journey for the Council
and that there were sometimes difficult legal and financial
problems that had to be worked through as part of co-production
engagement. She highlighted the recent Wood Green engagement as a
good example of the principles and ideas of co-production being
used to engage with a large number of people across a range of age
groups on the future of that part of the Borough. Beverley
Tarka added that an understanding in
the community of what co-production means would not happen
overnight but that there were now some excellent examples of where
co-production had happened. She said that co-production provided an
opportunity to enable a wider diversity of voices to be heard and
that the Council was very committed to this way of
working.