Agenda item

The Board considered a report of the Interim Director of Public Health County Durham, Adult and Health Services, Durham County Council that gave an update on the response in tackling social isolation and how to have a more coordinated response further to the 2014 Annual Report of the Director of Public Health entitled ‘All the lonely People’ focused on social isolation and loneliness and its effects on health and wellbeing (for copy see file of Minutes).

The Interim Director of Public Health reported that work had been carried out with the Area Action Partnerships on tackling isolation in the community.

Councillor Allen referred to the good work happening in the community through the AAPs in terms of health and asked how good lessons were shared within the County.  The Interim Director of Public Health said that there was information sharing but that we could do more by looking at the different themes and what each area required.

The Head of Planning and Service Strategy suggested that an event be organised to deal with how to tackle loneliness.  He referred to a mid Durham scheme that had not worked but lessons had been learned and could be shared.  He said that there was a danger of stigmatising people - just because someone was alone did not mean that they were lonely.

The Chairman commented that some areas had a lot of support such as Shildon through Livin Housing but that some areas received no support at all.

Referring to poor nutrition and diet Councillor Allen mentioned that an event had taken place in Shildon about the impact of high energy sugar drinks and asked if this would be rolled out to other areas.  The Interim Director of Public Health said that discussions were taking place with local businesses who sell the drinks.

The Director of Integration supported the recommendation on Integrated Community Hubs as they had picked isolation up as an issue.

The Chairman referred to Safe and Wellbeing visits and asked how the public could inform someone who needed one.  The Interim Director said that conversations took place within the community and people were advised how to refer.

Resolved:

That the contents of the report be noted and support given to the specific recommendations that:

·      Organisations and partners who prioritise reducing social isolation and loneliness should develop interventions that are based on the current evidence of what works: befriending services, community navigator programmes and group activities;

·      That commissions, where relevant should continue to consider ‘building in’ indicators which will tackle social isolation and loneliness;

·      That a basic common training package on how to engage and identify social isolated individuals and groups should be developed;

·      The Community Wellbeing Partnership will design and develop an evaluation framework to support organisations to be able to capture a range of outcome measures to demonstrate value and contribute to learning;

·      Given the numbers of older people in County Durham with one or more long term conditions, work to reduce social isolation and loneliness, will need to integrate with the proposed CCG integrated community hubs model;

·      On the back of recommendation that contact schemes should train individuals in using making every contact count (MECC) and undertake some brief and sensitive questionnaires to identify and appropriately refer people to local programmes using Locate;

·      The Community Wellbeing Partnership should consider placing social isolation and loneliness as a key focus of work for the foreseeable future to support, steer and enable the above recommendations to take place.