Agenda and minutes

www.swansea.gov.uk/disclosuresofinterests

Cllr Mary Jones and Cllr Jeff Jones declared a personal interest as their daughter is midwife in Singleton Hospital and there was some discussion around midwives and their involvement in Early Years.

Forms completed.

Questions must relate to matters on the open part of the Agenda of the meeting, and will be dealt with in a 10 minute period

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To approve & sign the Notes of the previous meeting(s) as a correct record.

Approved

Sian Bingham - Early Years and Family Support Manager

Chris Sivers – Director, Place

·         Sian Bingham and Gary Mahoney came to present to the Panel on the Early Years Work Stream

·         Age 3 is fundamental age for early support

·         This is a Healthy City Board and Marmot Team collaboration

·         This is a universal approach with targeted intervention where necessary

·         ‘Best Start Swansea’ has a Facebook page and a Twitter accounts

·         Workforce awareness sessions have been delivered so staff are up to date with the aims and objectives of the project

·         The ‘first 1000 days of a child life’ event was very successful

·         Books have been produced looking at play and healthy eating

·         Activity books have also been produced aimed at children

·         The projects have had face to face contact with over 5000 people in the last year and been involved in numerous events looking at various aspects of childcare

·         Children have been involved in making games

·         Libraries have also been involved in promoting parenting books and the Early Years project in general

·         An audit of need informed the early years strategy

·         The audit identified a lack of services for people during pregnancy and for children up to 3 years of age

·         Two major projects have been set up;

1. Jig-so is a multidisciplinary and multiagency integrated team for first time parents under 25 years old. The project has very impressive health outcomes associated with it related to smoking cessation and encouraging breastfeeding

2. Penderi Primary Care Early Years Pilot Project has been funded by the Penderi GP network. It focuses on parent skills and social prescribing. It aims to get to the root of the issues and looks at prevention of mental health. The support is very intensive

·         The future plan is to scale up the current messages

·         The department wants to build on the ‘First 1000 Days’ collaboration

·         Next steps will involve development of the Wellbeing Plans steps for objective 1: Best Start

·         There was discussion around the TAF in schools project which has won a Guardian Public Service Award

·         The Panel agreed that early intervention is key to this work

·         The core pathway needs to be enhanced and supported by this work – that is midwives, health visitors and schools

·         There is core programme training for health visitors so they can identify relevant issues easily

·         The Panel feel that in relation to mental health prevention strategy, senior managers in the health board should be driving it

·         There is concern that there is huge under resourcing in mental health on the PSB in general

·         The Panel were very pleased that there were so many successes in the project and that these could be built upon

·         Councillor Mary Jones

·         Cllr Mary Jones discussed the Welsh Audit Office overview report

·         Swansea is already integrating the ethos behind the Future Generations Act into its Scrutiny functions

·         Swansea also complete considerable pre-decision scrutiny

·         There should be feedback due from the conference which will be fed back to the Panel

·         Went through work plan. The next meeting is the last one of this municipal year