Partnership Board Minutes 15 December 2004

Minutes of the Meeting held at St Matthias Church Centre on 15 December 2004

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Welcome and Ice-breaker Introduction.
Janet Wright thanked everyone for attending the meeting and introduced the newly appointed Partnership Board Co-Chair, Michael Cass. Michael Cass asked everyone to take part in an ice- breaker.

People at the meeting:

• Janet Wright, Joint Commissioning Service Manager
• Ken Mccullough, Carer
• Michael Cass, Leeds People First
• Scott Cunningham, Learning Disability Forum
• Jon Rudette, Learning Disability Reference Group
• Nancy Hill, North West PCT
• Sheila Quinn, Women First
• Andrew Walsh, Learning Disability Reference Group
• Bill Walton, People in Action
• George Mcintyre, Chief Executive, Leeds South PCT

Other People who came to the meeting:

• Sheena Kelly, Clinical Service Manager, Community Support Team
• Andy Rawnsley, Independent Living Team

People who could not come to the meeting:

• Dave Rosser, Head of Service
• Thea Stein, Chief Executive North East PCT
• Sheila Dunham, Leeds Mental Health Trust
• Karina Jenkins, Learning Disability Reference Group
• Les France, Leeds Advocacy
• Norman Roberts, North East PCT
• Liz Carmody, Consultant Psychiatrist
• Maureen Bielska, People Matters
• Mark Fennelly, St Anne's Community Services

Janet Wright reminded people about the rules of the meeting. She also said if anybody had an item for Any Other Business or they wanted to talk about things that were recorded in the last minutes, they could discuss this with her during the morning break. This was because on previous occasions a lot of time was spent going over previous meetings, which left little time to discuss the issues of the day.

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Updates:

Chairperson Event
Michael Cass told the board on the 30th November 2004 he attended a Joint Chairpersons event in York, run by the Valuing People Team. They looked at ways to make Partnership Boards more effective, what they were doing well, what problems they had and things they were going to do in the future.

Appointment of Partnership Board Chair and Co-Chair.
Janet Wright said that the Chairperson interviews would take place in January 2005.

Learning Disability Development Fund
The successful applicants for the development fund grants were the ROOOTS Project and Pyramid of Arts. Andrew Walsh from the ROOOTS Project told the Board the money was going to be used to develop better services for African Caribbean people who have learning disabilities, develop training in black culture, and ways to improve health care.

Janet Wright said the Pyramid of Arts project will introduce professional artists to individuals and small groups of people with complex needs through a series of arts research residencies. Individuals with complex needs will be supported to demonstrate and record their interests and achievements.
Valuing People have also said that Learning Disability Development Funds will be available next year and will include an increase in funds.

Ethnicity Group - Aqila Choudhry
Aqila told the Board the Ethnicity Group have had two meetings. The first one looked at current issues and identified 20 key objectives. The second meeting took place on 14th December 2004 and included 3 guests from Bolton; the Head of Learning Disability Services, a Person Centred Planning Co-ordinator and a Development Worker. The aim of this meeting was to see how Bolton had developed their ethnicity work.

Information Exercise Feedback and Learning Disability Forum - Scott Cunningham
Scott thanked people for taking part in the workshops at the Partnership Board meeting in September, which looked at the Loan Library and Internet Access. The results of the workshop were handed out at the meeting and are available from Scott at the Learning Disability Forum.

Learning Disability Reference Group - Jon Rudette
Jon told the Board what was discussed at the last meeting which was held on 3rd December 2004:

• It was agreed that an Advocacy Task Group will be set up to look at the Advocacy Plan
• Ivan Barnett involved in the All Means All Task Group, had informed them that a set of Service Principles had been written which would make sure no one is left out. Cara Green added that these principles had been sent to the Reference Group for them to check they were acceptable.
• The Task Group were told about funding that may be available from Valuing People.

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Presentation

Service Re-design - Andy Rawnsley Andy told the Board why the service needs to be re-modelled, what may happen if this does not take place, what needs to change and other areas to be looked at. He then gave an update on the PFI bid. (The bid to get money from the government to build better housing and develop new services). A copy of the presentation is attached.

After the presentation the following issues were raised:

• Margaret Braithwaite said problems might occur for autistic people if the new places were too small. Andy said this would be taken into close consideration.
• Nancy Hill asked how would the services provided by outside organisations fit in to the plan? Andy said private and voluntary sector provider services have changed and are on the whole, delivered on a smaller scale but the changes have not been mirrored by Social Services. Social Services need to catch up and use what is available and project the type of services we need in the future.

Andy added that Leeds would need respite standalone services, specialist services for autism and to develop dementia services.

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Health Action Plan - Sheena Kelly

Sheena updated the Board on the progress with the Health Action Plan project, which started in June 2004.

As the two surgeries piloted in the project had a poor response, follow up phone calls were made to find out why people had not replied.

A total of 47 individuals had been contacted as a follow up to the first letter sent out by doctors. 6 people requested further contact although 3 of these were already having health involvement. Many individuals and carers said they were satisfied their health needs were being met. Some also thought that Health Action Plans would be included into Person Centred Planning. It was noted that the surgery that had sent out a stamped addressed envelope with their letter had much better feedback.

As a result of this project, 3 people are now in the process of completing a plan. The toolkit (on how to implement Health Action Plans) will be improved for future use and a suggestion has been made that all doctors practices will be contacted in the North West PCT to be told about the research project and to be sent the toolkit.

It was also suggested that researchers from the Centre for Research in Primary Care at Leeds University and key people in the Community Support Team could do presentations at special meetings with GPs, practice nurses and health managers to make people more aware about Health Facilitation and Health Action Plans.

Sheena told the Board people with learning disabilities must be registered with GPs by April and offered a Health Action Plan by June 2005.

Health Action Plan Task After Sheena's presentation the Board divided into groups to work on tasks;

The groups were given a blank template of a Health Action Plan plus two examples of people with learning disabilities. With the information provided they then had to look at the peoples health needs, develop a health action plan, and consider;

• who should be involved in making it happen
• what would be the best way to put this into practice, making sure the service user is involved
• Who may be the best person to be a Health Facilitator
• What practical things can be done as an organisation, carer, friend

After the group exercise, people came up with ideas and these are some of them;

• Train GPs, medical schools
• Link and share information with Person Centred Planning
• Inpatient hospitals could identify if people have a Health Action Plan
• Have a point of access outside the health service e.g. People in Action, advocacy organisations
• Service Users pointed out the Facilitator must be someone they like and get on with
• Service Users may also want an advocate to represent them rather than a parent
• The Disability Rights Commission should be involved, making use of the Disability Discrimination Act.

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Any Other Business

• Ken Mccullough raised the issue of the development of the Executive Board and Partnership Board. Janet Wright said this would be discussed at the next Board meeting when the new Chair was in place.
• Ken commented that Valuing People had extended Deborah Moore's contract and Steven Ladyman and Rob Greig assured everyone that Partnership Boards would continue to run. The Valuing People Support Team are to join a large group called SCIE (Social Care Institute of Excellence), which will be the centre for excellence in Social Care.
• Ken also told the Board the next National Carers Group will be meeting on 25th February 2005 and commented on the importance of having representatives from our region on the National Carers Group. He said the Partnership Board should pay carers expenses to participate in these meetings. Janet Wright agreed with this and said that this was being taken forward through the Yorkshire and Humberside Valuing People Support Team.

At the end of the meeting Michael Cass thanked everyone for attending.

The Partnership Board will meet again on Tuesday 15th March 2005, St Matthias Church Centre. From 10.00am to 2.00 p.m.

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