Issue - meetings

The Board is asked to give its endorsement for partners to progress with geographical alignment across the whole system of public services at populations of 30-55,000 to enable integration to deliver better outcomes for people and communities in Oldham.

The Board received a report seeking endorsement for partners to progress with geographical alignment across the whole system, including health and social care and wider public services, at populations of 30-55,000 to better enable integrated services to deliver improved outcomes for people and communities in Oldham.

Experience and learning from health and social care and other forms of integrated working had led to agreement in Oldham and Greater Manchester (GM) to scale up place-based integration across the whole system of public services at populations of 30-55,000 so that resources could be better directed to people and communities. This approach had the support of Oldham partners through the Joint Leadership Team and the Oldham Leadership Board and at GM-level through the Wider Leadership Team and the GM Health and Social Care Partnership.  Oldham did not currently have coterminous boundaries across all public services making it difficult to achieve full integration and reform of public services as resources and capacity do not align.

The report considered existing forms of multi-agency integration that had already occurred to date and explored the need for geographical alignment at populations of 30-55,000 which was considered to be the optimum size to create economies of scale while remaining small enough to be locally sensitive.  Five service footprints based on Ward boundaries had been considered by partners to be legitimate building blocks for service footprints and a number of partner agencies had signed up to amend their existing boundaries to achieve alignment.  To reach decisions on geographical alignment a series of criteria and supporting principles, presented within the submitted report, had been determined to assess feasibility.  Once agreement was reached, submissions for formal approval would be made to the Council and the Clinical Commissioning Group.

A Member noted that some proposed areas contained some significant social differences within their boundaries and advised of concerns expressed about distances to be travelled to attend a single point of service in an area.  In response it was acknowledged that such differences did exist, but that there was an expectation that services would be provided locally from, for example, three delivery points if that was what was needed in a particular area.

RESOLVED that –

1.            the proposal to develop coterminous public service footprints at populations of 30-55,000 across the Borough be endorsed;

2.            the approach to geographical alignment being progressed on the basis of five footprints using Wards as the building blocks for alignment be endorsed;

3.            the criteria and principles by which a decision on geographical alignment will be reached be endorsed;

4.            the next steps and decision-making process to progress geographical alignment be noted.