Agenda item

To update the Panel on progress made towards the recommendations made in the 2017 scrutiny review on Physical Activity for Older People.

Andrea Keeble, Commissioning Manager for Active Communities, introduced this update report noting that the previous Adults & Health Scrutiny Panel took a lot of evidence which led to a series of recommendations that were agreed by Cabinet in March 2017 and had been worked on by the team since then.  

Physical activity is incredibly important to wellbeing and this becomes more important as people get older but paradoxically as people age they tend to do less physical activity. 

On policy the People theme and the Place theme in the new Borough Plan really emphasise the importance of physical activity. This is also much more prominent in commissioning including through care home contracts which now require monitoring on physical activity.

The recommendations referred to getting more money in for physical activity projects and there had been progress on this in several specific areas:

• A small amount of money had been provided for a project called Oomph, part funded by Sports England. This involves training practitioners and care workers at places such as the Haynes centre to deliver fun and innovative physical activity sessions.
• There is an initiative by the Mayor of London called the Laureus Model City project where Haringey is one of three London boroughs selected for funding to support bottom up working with community on what they want in order to generation ideas on how to increase physical activity, including among older people.
• The Wembley National Stadium Trust has provided a small amount of funding to support walking football and netball.
• The Silverfit programme was also continuing at Lordship Rec which involve older people coming to do activities such as yoga and badminton once a week.
• Some Comic Relief funding had been obtained to start a new project called Silver Sports to engage about 300 people in sheltered housing accommodation to do more physical activity.
• The CCG has been doing some work on “GP gyms” where GPs send people to specific classes in the local area and there is ongoing funding for this next year.

On communications, a booklet on the opportunities for physical activities for older people has been produced and distributed to GP practices and libraries which has proved to be popular.

Finally Fusion have been taking action to make their programmes more suitable for older people, more details are included under recommendations 5 & 6 in the report.

In response to questions from the Panel, Andrea Keeble said:

• On recommendation 21, the Panel had asked for a letter to be sent to the CQC to recommend that enabling access to physical activity should be regarded as part of the inspection process. This letter had been sent but it was not known what response has been received so it was requested that details about this should be obtained. (ACTION)
• In response to a query about the funding for the sheltered schemes at Palace Gates Church Andrea agreed to find out more about the current status of this. (ACTION) Cllr Connor commented that similar funding for the Priory in Muswell Hill had been provided by Ward Budgets but these were now unfortunately unavailable.
• On the lack of information about older people activity on the Fusion website, the information about classes are on the website but Andrea meets with them on the monthly basis so she would raise the need to get more specific information about activities for older people on the website at the next opportunity. (ACTION)
• On working with other departments to build a more joined up approach, the team works closely with Regeneration on issues such as, for example, to encourage people to be more physically active through positive changes to the public realm.
• On the Mayor’s Laureus Model City approach, the idea is that the community itself decides the approach and the vision to use sport to create change. There is a steering group with strong representation from the local community, a specific vision and objectives are being developed and there is a strong theme around reducing social isolation.
• Fusion have signed up to the Dementia Alliance, some of the staff have had training but the aim is to get more of them involved.
• On a suggestion that there should be more activity sessions for people with disabilities there are some available that are not advertised because they are aimed at a specific population (such as at the Haynes Centre) but some of these are chair-based activities so there could perhaps be more activities aimed at other disabled groups.
• On the monitoring of communication materials there is a small team which gets out around twice a year to do some spot monitoring of the places where they should be available.
• With regards to the funding for Silverfit there is an ongoing discussion with public health and the CCG about the social prescribing model but the funding for next year is currently covered.