Agenda item

The Committee received a report of the Corporate Director of Resources (Interim) which presented progress towards achieving the key outcomes of the council’s corporate performance framework (for copy see file of minutes).

The Chair referred to the low uptake of the Healthy Start Voucher Scheme and staff training to address this and queried whether there was evidence that the staff training was having an impact on the uptake.  The Corporate Equality & Strategy Manager advised that it was difficult to assess the impact as the Health Start Voucher Scheme was reliant on a growing number of people being eligible for universal credit and other benefits and it was too early to give an indication.  Other variables would also impact on the scheme such as the impact of COVID, therefore it may take time to provide an assessment.

Ms J Norman referred to the free school meals (FSM) census and whether there had been a reduction in number of children eligible for free school meals that were not claiming and whether there was any data collected from children who were accessing school holiday activities with food provision, that were not eligible for FSM.  The Corporate Equality & Strategy Manager confirmed that FSM data had two values, there was the number of children eligible for FSM and then those who had claimed a FSM on the day the survey was taken.  Due to school closures on the day of the survey this value did not assist, however the number of children eligible across all settings had increased to one in four children and this was a concern.  The information was being used by early help, to target different areas via food poverty groups and holiday hunger activities, to deliver effective programmes across school holidays.

Councillor Bainbridge was concerned that there had been no significant improvement to childhood obesity programme and the Corporate Equality & Strategy Manager advised that it would be one of the central objectives of the Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy and would be considered by Active Durham to bring leisure and fitness to more children.

Resolved:

That the report be received.