Issue - meetings

This paper highlights to the Board, the Kirklees Director of Public Health (DPH) Annual Report 2022/23, entitled ‘Poverty Matters’.

Contact: Rachel Spencer-Henshall, Strategic Director, Corporate Strategy, Commissioning and Public Health, Lucy Wearmouth, Head of Improving Population Health and Owen Richardson, Data and Insight Enablement Lead for Public Health

Rachel Spencer-Henshall, Strategic Director Corporate Strategy, Commissioning and Public Health, informed the Board that it is the responsibility of the Director for  Public Health to produce an annual report, and the 2022/23 annual report, is entitled ‘Poverty Matters’.

The Board was informed that although there has been some reduction in for example, the price of fuel, things are not necessarily getting better for people in terms of food inflation, and the situation with regard to mortgages and rents is getting worse.

Citizens Advice reported an unprecedented request for support, particularly from those who had reached crisis point.  The findings suggests that even though people were going to Citizen Advice before this period, people are reaching crisis quicker and there are more people in crisis and the demand is becoming greater.

There have also been reports from Healthwatch, highlighting that people are avoiding NHS appointments due to the cost of travel, and in some cases even the cost of phone calls are proving challenging.  In addition, there are reports of a few people unable to take up prescriptions and potentially not visiting the dentist.

This creates many things that could have been mitigated in Primary Care through use of prescriptions or access to dentistry, and that might ultimately impact on the system in terms of more people presenting at A&E. 

There has been twice as many referrals into food banks through the Welfare and Exchequer Team, and that is only the ones known about within the system, and not what is happening outside of the system.  Demand is high for all of those things.

The Board was informed that lived experience has become a bit of a ‘buzz’ word in terms of how to describe getting the view of people. It is however, fundamentally having a conversation with people who are experiencing this and getting a sense of what it is like for them to be in poverty.

It is important to thank the 12 people who contributed to this annual report, who were as open as they could possibly be about what they were experiencing, and the report could not have been written without them.  They were brutally honest about how it was affecting them day-to day of a life being in poverty.  They came from a range of different backgrounds and were in many different situations across the whole Kirklees district.

Many of the individuals had received support via the Local Area Coordination Teams, which is a partnership agenda, run in the council alongside health colleagues and Social Prescribing Link Workers. 

The main theme that came out of the report was that people were struggling around household bills and general finances, which resulted in skipping meals, buying food that was out of date and as reduced as possible. Occasionally, this was on the basis of hoping that the produce was going to be all right, knowing there was probably a level of risk,  as in some cases it might have gone off.

There was a lot of hope,  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7