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Issue - meetings

Meeting: 15/05/2019 - Cabinet (Item 351)

351 Public Health Annual Report pdf icon PDF 78 KB

Report of the Chief Officer for Communities, Public Health, Environment and Prosperity, presenting the Public Health Annual Report for 2018/19, circulated separately for Members of the Committee.

 

A covering Report is attached to the agenda and the annual report is a separate document, available on the website.

Additional documents:

Minutes:

(Councillors Connett, Hannaford and Whitton attended in accordance with Standing Order 25(2) and spoke to this item).

 

The Cabinet considered the Report of the Chief Officer for Communities, Public Health, Environment and Prosperity (PH/19/01), presenting the Public Health Annual Report for 2018/19, which was available on the website.

 

The Cabinet noted that the Director of Public Health had a statutory duty to write an annual report, and the local authority has a statutory duty to publish it (section 73B [5] & [6] of the 2006 NHS Act, inserted by section 31 of the 2012 Health and Social Care Act).

 

The Annual Public Health Report was the twelfth in a series of annual reports on the health of the population of Devon which began in 2007/08.  Each Report covered the general health of the population of Devon; increasingly the detail about health and wellbeing could be found in the annual Joint Strategic Needs assessment available at:  www.devonhealthandwellbeing.org.uk/jsna.

 

The current Report focussed on the mental health and wellbeing of the population.  It was recognised that the same priority should be given to mental health as physical health in terms of prevention, early intervention, treatment and rehabilitation.

 

Health inequality persisted and similarly existed between physical and mental health.

 

There were ten recommendations set out in the report:

 

1.     Communities in Devon adopting a positive approach to mental health, recognising how common mental health issues were among the population;

 

2.     Promotion of mental health and wellbeing in schools and educational settings;

 

3.     Wider recognition of, and action to address, the inequality that existed for people with serious mental health issues in terms of physical health, employment and housing;

 

4.     Recognition of, and action to address the mental ill-health risks associated with poverty, poor housing and lack of decent employment;

 

5.     Ensuring that a ‘Health in all policies” approach embraced mental health as well as physical health;

 

6.     Action to prevent, recognise and treat the symptoms of trauma (including as a result of adverse childhood experiences) to prevent inappropriate and/or ineffective use of resources, whether they be health, social care or criminal justice;

 

7.     Sufficient expert support available within community settings to complement national and local developments in home-based and community-based care;

 

8.     Recognition of the importance of formal and informal caring responsibilities at all ages and information and practical support for carers, particularly in the light of the potential impact of caring on carers’ own mental health and wellbeing;

 

9.     Implementation of the recommendations of the fifth annual MBRRACE-UK (‘Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Enquiries’) report, particularly those concerning maternal mental health and women from vulnerable groups; and

 

10.  The Devon Health and Wellbeing Board continued to have mental health as one of its top priorities and to work, as a partnership, to achieve both measurable improvements in outcomes and also improvement in local authority comparator group rankings over the next five years.

 

The matter having been debated and the options and/or alternatives and other relevant factors (e.g.  ...  view the full minutes text for item 351



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