Agenda and minutes

Apologies for absence were received from Cllr Mohammed and Cllr Bradford.

The Committee is asked to approve as a correct record the minutes of the last meeting held on 9 March 2023.

Report of Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne & Wear NHS Foundation Trust

The Committee received a presentation by the Children and Young People’s Service Newcastle/Gateshead CNTW, which provided a spotlight on delivery of Children’s Waiting Times.

The Committee received an update on SPA (Single Point of Access) and a ‘one stop shop’ for any children’s referrals requiring a mental health assessment. Following assessment, treatment and intervention will be offered by the most relevant provider if required. Referrals will be reviewed and triaged by community nurse practitioners in the hope that young people are referred to the right place at the right time for onward assessment and treatment or advice and guidance; as per NHS long term plan

Young people aged 0-18 living within the catchment of Newcastle or Gateshead can access SPA and referrals can be made by any professionals working with a young person, self-referrals from the YP or their family/carer. SPA is provided within the children’s mental health services kin CNTW foundation trust.

Conversely the Committee were advised that SPA is not a crisis team and is not a 24/7 provision for children’s mental health – all urgent referrals are dealt with through the Children and Young People’s Service (CYPS) and the Intensive Community Treatment Service (ICTS).  SPA is also not a treatment service but it is for children’s emotional wellbeing and mental health through the Getting Help and Getting More Help services and not for all children’s services.

The Committee also received an update on the Emotional Wellbeing Team, Gateshead which is provided by South Tyneside NHS Foundation Trust and are based within Grassbanks with flexibility to attend other venues if required. The EWBT provide support to children and young people within Gateshead Catchment area via Single Point of Access.

EWBT offers intervention and assessment for a range of issues including:

·        Low mood

·        Anxiety

·        Bereavement and Loss

·        Bullying

·        Eating Distress

·        Relationship Difficulties

Interventions provided by EWBT include individual support (counselling and CBT informed approach). Groupwork further assessment and formulation, parent & carer support and work collaboratively with Education, GP’s, School nurses and health visitors and other specialist services.

The Committee were informed about the work of the Getting More Help Service which was summarised as follows:-

Mental Health Pathway

·        Significant deterioration in emotional wellbeing/mental health

·        Experiencing auditory and/or visual hallucinations

·        Increase in level of self-harming behaviours

·        Concerns regarding risk to self and/or others

·        Concerns regarding exploitation (online, in public) (victim or perpetrator)

·        Increase in level of offending behaviour that appears linked to Mental Health presentation and/or emotional dysregulation

·        Assessment of moderate to severe mental health presentations. YP are offered an appointment with community practitioners and following this community practitioners present their formulation of need within an MDT to support shared decision making

·        Treatment – allocation of care co-ordinator can be treatment in its self or the care

·        Co-ordinator can refer onto therapies via the psychological therapies meeting.

·        This meeting has therapist’s supporting decision making with care co-ordinators to ensure the right therapy is offered. Therapies available are:

·        CBT, DBT (From January), Psychotherapy, family therapy, art therapy

Eating Disorders Team

The  ...  view the full minutes text for item F83

Report to follow

The Committee received a presentation which provided an update on NHS Dentistry.

The Committee were advised that NHS Dentistry services must operate in strict accordance with nationally set Government Regulation (2006). Under NHS Dentistry national regulation there is no formal registration of patients with dental practices as part of their NHS Dentistry offer, patients can therefore approach any dental practice offering NHS care for access.

Dental contracts and provision is activity and demand led with the expectation practices deliver courses of treatment with recall intervals appropriate to clinical need and manage their available commissioned capacity to best meet both local demand and the clinical needs of patients presenting to their practice.

The contract regulations set out the contract currency which is measured in units of dental activity (UDAs) that are attributable to a banded course of treatment prescribed under the regulations.

NHS North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board (ICB) do not commission private dental services but the NHS dental regulations do not prohibit the provision of private dentistry by NHS Dental Practices.

The prolonged COVID 19 pandemic period required NHS Dental Practices to follow strict Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) guidance which significantly restricted levels of access to dental care. As a result backlog demands for dental care remains high with the urgency and increased complexity of patient clinical presentations further impacting the ability for the NHS Dental Care system to return back to pre-COVID operational norms.

The Committee also received an update on NHS Commissioned Capacity, pressures and challenges i.e. COVID 19 Impacts, Dental workforce recruitment and retention, and NHS Dental Contract & System Reform.

Locally the following actions have been taken to date to try and address these problems:-

·        Offered incentives for ALL NHS dental practices to prioritise any patients struggling to access and NHS Practice and that present with an urgent dental care need.

·        Encouraging practices to maintain short notice cancellation lists to minimise as far as possible any ‘lost’ critical time.

·        Additional funding made available to all NHS dental practices who were able to offer additional clinical capacity with a focus on prioritising patients with urgent and/or dental care treatment needs as well as nationally identified high risk groups, i.e. children to help reduce outstanding COVID-19 backlog demand (336 session commissioned in Gateshead in 2022-23).

·        Invested in the provision of additional dental triage within the NHS 111 Integrated Out of Hours, Dental Clinical Assessment Service as well as increasing capacity within the Out of Hours and in hours urgent dental treatment services to better support patients seeking urgent dental care vai NHS 111.

·        Increased local investment during 2022-23 into specialist orthodontic service to secure additional treatment capacity wherever possible in order to help reduce waiting times for patients.

·        NHS England funded advert in British Dental Journal to try to attract overseas dentists into the area – match up with providers who have vacancies and support them through the process of getting onto the National Dental Performers List which enables them to deliver NHS dental care.  ...  view the full minutes text for item F84

Joint Report of the Chief Executive and the Strategic Director Corporate Services and Governance

The Committee received a report which was set out in two parts. The first part set out the current work programme for Families OSC for the municipal year 2022-23 and the second part details the current position and next steps in the development of the work programme for this OSC for the municipal year 2023-24.

The Committee’s current work programme is set out at Appendix 1 and any changes to the programme have been highlighted in bold and italics for ease of identification.

In addition the following items were suggested by members of the Committee for inclusion this municipal year:-

·        Family Hub Development Work

·        Annual Joint Report (with Commissioning Team) to look at new initiatives in Gateshead for Children’s Mental Health

·        Preventing Youth Crime and work of the Outreach Support Service

The Committee were advised that partner organisations will be consulted on the emerging issues for each OSC for 2023-24, with a view to OSC’s considering any feedback and endorsing its respective work programme at June 2023 OSC meetings. At which time Committee will be asked to refer its new work programme to Council for agreement.