Health Committee Report
By Nafisat Ishola
THURROCK residents should see their community progress with improved reports of better adult social care, health hubs, plans to reduce unplanned admissions in hospital and an increase in learning disability health checks.
The meeting, which was held at the Civic offices in Gray’s discussed several items all aiming to improve the health and wellbeing of the area.
The purpose of the committee is to look at issues that hopefully will lead people make better lifestyle choices, giving the best possible start for children and helping people stay healthy so they live longer.
Item 7 on the agenda saw Tania Sitch, Integrated Care Director discuss the improvements for the Adult Social Care Services. She said: “We’ve been very fortunate that we’ve been funded for the CCG some additional money, to work with Falls Prevention which is working for care homes and members of the public, to prevent them from falling.”
She added: “The occupational therapists have really good assessments where they can talk to someone about how to walk across the room and the right footwear to wear.
We used to have a criteria where you had to have two falls before you could access the falls service. That’s too late – we’re trying to do much more at the intervention stage. People who could be at risk of falling, we’re identifying them a lot quicker and referring them to the falls service before they’ve even had a fall.”
Item 10 saw a massive success, with Jane Itangata introduced the learning disabilities health checks and discussing the difference it’s made and the improvements. She said: “ We pulled together what we felt wasn’t a very bad action plan because I think it has helped us be a lot more focused around the pieces of work that needed to be done. Data show that we’ve got 483 people who are eligible in the surgeries.
She added: “From your report you’ll see we’ve got coverage as of 28/02/17 of 58.5%. I wanted to bring in some more information so we checked this today manually, and as of today 63% of eligible people have had their health checks completed. We set out target for 70% as a CCG; I think we’re not doing to badly of getting there.
Guest speaker Neil Woodbridge added: “ I want to thank the members for raising this issue, as of three years ago we were down to 11% and that was really scary. I think you’ve done an excellent job and thank you for that.”
Chair Cllr Victoria Holloway described the plan as ground breaking. She said: “ Nobody else in Essex is doing this, it is really nice to have items like this on the agenda. It’s ground breaking – not just for Thurrock but for Essex and wider to be able to have the quality of organisation and staff to be able to put this sort of thinking together it’s amazing – so thank you.”
