On Monday 16 November, Healthwatch Camden organised a ‘Health and Wellbeing Consultation Seminar’ on behalf of Camden and Islington Public Health, who wanted to gather feedback on the draft Health and Wellbeing strategy. Delegates were members of local community organisations.
Frances Hasler, director of Healthwatch Camden talked about the Joint Health &Wellbeing Strategy. She gave a brief explanation of how the Health & Wellbeing board worked, its remit and membership.
She explained that the five priorities in the Health & Wellbeing Strategy are based on needs assessment. The priorities are to promote better health, prevent things getting worse and to improve outcomes.
Healthwatch Camden is here to help professionals to create better services by putting them in touch with their patients’ and service users’ views. We want all services to work together to develop an integrated and efficient health and social care system.
Delegates at the seminar attended workshops.
The workshops looked at:
- What is the role of the Voluntary Community Sector (VCS) in Camden Health & Wellbeing Strategy?
- The first 1,001 days of a child’s life
- Resilient Families
- Healthy weight for healthy lives and
- Ensuring good mental health
Some of the comments delegates made are:
Role of VCS
a. Voluntary sector helps reach hard to reach communities and sign posts effectively. We all need to work in partnership and have appropriate and up to date information on services.
b. Support for all parents under the age 0 5years/teenagers and transitions – value parenting
c. Financial support voluntary sector will help reduce burden on statutory services and provide preventative community based support
First 1001days
a. Wording, strengthen support for emotional wellbeing before and after birth (parents mental health problems)
b. Support on sleep deprivation – sleep practices
c. Need explicit reference to fathers’ especially young fathers.
Ensuring good mental health for all:-
a. Enlist faith groups, community workers to promote better mental health
b. Educate wider communities on mental health and reduce stigma
c. Lunch clubs to combat isolation
d. Outreach workers trained in mental health are important for community engagement, promotion and prevention
e. Mental health champions especially from BAME communities
f. Targeted work with Bangladeshi community especially women who suffer from long term depression
Resilient families
a. Weekend evening hotline, staffed by volunteers but trained by the statutory sector
b. Resilience training
Reducing alcohol related harm
Include the impact on carers of those with alcohol dependency and need for them (carers) to be supported.
Healthy weight
a. Promote food for life in schools
b. Promote a holistic programme to teach children, parents and wider community good food culture
What’s next?
The Health & Wellbeing report will be presented to the Health & Wellbeing Board in January 2016.
