By helping establish a new partnership with the local NHS and voluntary sector, Ribble Valley District Council has started championing healthy living and wellbeing in its rural communities. This case study shows how district councils have improved the health of their local areas.
Ribble Valley is in East Lancashire and in geographic terms is the largest district in the county, covering 583 square kilometres. The area is extremely rural, home to just under 60,000 people.
Over a quarter of the population is aged over 65. In the coming years the fastest growth is expected to be in this population. Life expectancy is in line with the national average.
But on a number of other measures there are worrying signs, with higher than average rates of inactivity and mental health problems. The area also has high numbers of people – nearly 10,000 – with a limiting long-term illness, such as diabetes and heart disease.
Highlights of progress
As part of the Sustainability and Transformation Programme, the district council has been working with partners to look at how it can integrate care and wellbeing services.
In 2017 it helped establish the Ribblesdale Community Partnership, which brought together the four local GP practices, nearby NHS trusts, the clinical commissioning group, county council and voluntary sector.
Ribblesdale covers about two-thirds of the Ribble Valley district.
The partnership started to meet monthly at the district council offices to plan out what should be done. A strategy was eventually developed, which identified five priority areas.
They were:
- joined-up care and support
- children and young people
- adult mental health
- self care
- access to healthy lifestyle support.
Council Head of Regeneration and Housing Colin Hirst said: “The meetings were a real eye-opener. As a district council we are not in charge of public health, but what we recognised was that we still had a huge role in healthy living and wellbeing through our planning, housing and community functions.
“All the partners were agreed on what the aims were and we were all active in trying to help people. But through the partnership we were able to start joining things up more.
“Having time to talk to the GPs, we realised there were significant numbers of people who were feeling isolated so we started to alter the way we used community transport.”
This included routes to ensure people could get to lunch clubs and day centres as well as the new events run by the county council-funded healthy lifestyle team’s Up and Active service.
The service has traditionally organised the local exercise-on-referral scheme, but has started to run more universal drop-in sessions, including exercise classes, family fun events and organised walks, in community settings. They have proved popular – in the last quarter more than 4,000 people attended events.
Health and Fitness Development Officer Tracy Balko said: “These are people we would never have reached before. By intervening early we should be able to have
Future plans
Other changes are also being made. The way the integrated neighbourhood teams work is being altered to align with mental health and social care services, to allow the team to refer people on if need be.
Meanwhile, the Clitheroe Community Hospital is starting to be used to provide more access to tests and investigations locally to reduce the travel times people face.
Longer-term decisions still have to be made. The community partnership was set up as a two-year pilot. Its impact is currently being reviewed and a decision will be taken later in 2019 about what happens next.
Mr Hirst said: “It has not necessarily been about doing new things, but just doing existing things in a better way. By working with partners and GPs in particular we have been able to sharpen up our offer.
“We are now reviewing how to take the community partnership forward. It will also influence our own corporate plans as a district council.”
Lessons and key messages
Mr Hirst said it was important to work with members to demonstrate and discuss how district councils could be involved in the health agenda.
“Because the public health funding goes to the county, members can think it is not something they should be involved with. So we looked at developing this message. Our health and housing lead member championed the promotion of the district role helping to run workshops and we produced a leaflet explaining how districts have an impact”
“In many ways it goes back to the core of what districts were set up to do - to look after the local community and make sure services and facilities are accessible.”
But he says it is also important to keep the meetings focused. “There are times we started talking about staffing details or other things we cannot control through the partnership. You want the meeting to be effective so you have to be prepared to keep things on track.”
Contact
Colin Hirst
Head of Regeneration and Planning
Ribble Valley District Council
[email protected]