Agenda and draft minutes

Apologies for absence were received from Councillor Bora Kwon and James Cavanagh.

If a Member of the Board, or any other member present in the meeting has a disclosable pecuniary interest in a particular item, whether or not it is entered in the Authority’s register of interests, or any other significant interest which they consider should be declared in the public interest, they should declare the existence and, unless it is a sensitive interest as defined in the Member Code of Conduct, the nature of the interest at the commencement of the consideration of that item or as soon as it becomes apparent.

At meetings where members of the public are allowed to be in attendance and speak, any Member with a disclosable pecuniary interest or other significant interest may also make representations, give evidence or answer questions about the matter.  The Member must then withdraw immediately from the meeting before the matter is discussed and any vote taken.

Where members of the public are not allowed to be in attendance and speak, then the Member with a disclosable pecuniary interest should withdraw from the meeting whilst the matter is under consideration. Members who have declared other significant interests should also withdraw from the meeting if they consider their continued participation in the matter would not be reasonable in the circumstances and may give rise to a perception of a conflict of interest.

Members are not obliged to withdraw from the meeting where a dispensation to that effect has been obtained from the Standards Committee.

There were no declarations of interest.

To approve the minutes of the previous meeting as an accurate record and note any outstanding actions.

The minutes of the meeting held on 23 June 2025 were agreed as an accurate record.

Sarah Bright (Director of People’s Commissioning, Transformation and Partnerships) gave a brief overview of the report. The Board agreed to defer the recommendations to the next formal meeting.

RESOLVED

1. That the Health and Wellbeing Board deferred approval of the recommendations to the following meeting.

This item contains an exempt appendix. To discuss the contents of the appendix in private the Board will need to pass the following resolution:

Under Section 100A (4) of the Local Government Act 1972, that the public and press be excluded from the meeting during the consideration of an item of business, on the grounds that it contains the likely disclosure of exempt information, as defined in paragraph 2 of Schedule 12A of the said Act, and that the public interest in maintaining the exemption currently outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information.

Fiona Bateman (Independent Chair of the Hammersmith & Fulham Safeguarding Adults Board) presented the report. She explained that the Board was a multi-agency partnership between the local authority, health partners, and the police. The annual report focused on the core operation of the Board, the Safeguarding Adults Reviews (SARs) carried out by the Safeguarding Adults Case Review Group (SACRG). The SACRG was a subgroup of the Board and their responsibilities included reviewing referrals where cases may meet criteria for a SAR, as well as monitoring responses to recommendations from previous reviews.

Fiona Bateman said the Board wanted to ensure that decision making was robust and confident and the SARs were populated by appropriate people, who could reflect and implement learning that came from the reviews. She said that was a key focus for the Board – for organisations to evidence what they had done to implement the learning from reviews in operational practice and strategies.

Fiona Bateman explained that the SARs were human stories that provided a solid evidence base for changes in policy and practice. It was important not to lose sight of the reasons for improvements. She said it required everyone to be open and transparent. Her goal was for the reviews to influence strategic decision making and she wanted the board to make progress on that in the coming year.

The Chair thanked Fiona Bateman for the report and presentation and opened the floor to questions.

Sue Spiller highlighted the issues of cultural sensitivity raised in the report and noted that in some communities there was still a mistrust of safeguarding and felt more thought needed to be given to the information that went out to them. She also discussed the importance of building cultural sensitivity for staff and suggested awareness sessions to make safeguarding services feel more accessible and approachable.

Fiona Bateman said cultural competency was a very important area for the Board and one that she hoped to have much greater impact on over next year. The Board were also looking at cultural competency work across London and how it could be adapted locally. She agreed that some of the language used was not very accessible and there was room to simplify and give a clearer message. She said there would be more to report on this next year.

Councillor Natalia Perez welcomed the report and asked for more information on the steps that were being taken to empower vulnerable adults to make decisions about their own care and support needs. Fiona Bateman said there was always a balance to be had between the statutory duty to safeguard and people’s wishes. There were circumstances where people could have a reduced capacity to keep themselves safe – for example in cases of long-term trauma, substance misuse, or domestic abuse. She said the Board was scrutinising the data in this area closely.

Jacqui McShannon (Executive Director of People’s Services) thanked Fiona Bateman for the report and said the Council welcomed her leadership as Independent Chair. She asked how  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

Sue Roostan (H&F ICB Borough Director) presented the item on Improving adult community specialist palliative care services for all residents in North West London. She highlighted the following key points:

• A new hospice at home service was planned to provide 24/7 enhanced care for those in their final weeks of life.
• Residents would be able to access specialist hospice inpatient beds at all North West London hospice.
• Five new enhanced end-of-life care beds were planned.
• The 24/7 advice line would be expanded to people not known to the service.
• Enhanced bereavement support would be put in place with a clear pathway for access and support.

Sue Roostan said the plan was to have contracts in place with providers by 1 October 2025. A workshop was planned for mid-October to engage with residents on end-of-life bed locations.

The Chair welcomed the update and the enhanced service.

RESOLVED

1. The Health and Wellbeing Board supported the implementation of the enhanced service.

Caroline Farrar (HCP Managing Director) presented an update on the Hammersmith & Fulham Health and Care Partnership’s 10 Year Health Plan. She explained that the plan was designed to address the fact that services were becoming more unsustainable. The plan recommended three key shifts – from hospital to community, from analogue to digital, and from sickness to prevention.

Caroline Farrar acknowledged that it was a time of significant change in the NHS, with changes to the operating model at national, regional, and Integrated Care Board (ICB) levels. There were still some questions around how these changes would be delivered, but she said there were real opportunities too. She said the Health and Care Partnership would take the rest of the financial year to solidify their thinking and develop plans and noted that the Health and Wellbeing Strategy may have to be revisited as that came into focus.

The Chair thanked Caroline for the update. She said the Council was very keen to be involved in any preventative pilots.

Jacqui McShannon (Executive Director of People’s Services) asked what attention was being given to children and young people and how the integrated neighbourhood approach could be used to bring services to children and young people.

Caroline Farrar said the plan was intended to be a whole population approach. She noted that at a workshop last week that brought together colleagues from Health and the Integrated Care Board to explore prevention work aimed at keeping young people out of crisis. She noted there were other elements such as the Children’s Social Care reforms that partners needed to work through together.

Jacqui McShannon said she understood there was new health guidance around multi-disciplinary approaches and asked if that was something health colleagues were thinking about. She said she was keen for children and young people to be high on the agenda and said there were opportunities to be creative going forward.

Caroline Farrar said she had not seen the guidance yet but had recently attended the Families First for Children Pathfinder to learn about the work being done to better connect local authority and health services to ensure professionals were responding early to situations, keeping children safe and supporting their development.

Councillor Natalia Perez asked how the Partnership was envisaging the shift from analogue to digital. Caroline Farrar said a lot of the focus in the plan was on the NHS app, which she felt was very easy to use but said many people were still not aware of it. She said there needed to be a focus on digital exclusion. She also highlighted new technologies such as ambient voice technology and artificial intelligence but noted there were clinical governance questions around their use. She noted that the partnership was also looking at how to make the most of their data and improved analytics to identify opportunities.

Navneet Willoughby (Central London Community NHS Healthcare Trust), in response to Jacqui McShannon’s earlier question, said as a provider of children’s services in H&F, she fully supported  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

Navneet Willoughby (Director of Operations for Inner Boroughs at CLCH) presented the CLCH Organisational Strategy. She noted that the strategy had four pillars:

• To improve health and healthcare outcomes
• To tackle inequalities in outcomes, experience, and access
• To enhance productivity and value for money
• To help the NHS support broader economic development

Navneet Willoughby explained that the core of the strategy was to create a flourishing Neighbourhood Health Service to provide seamless community care. To achieve that the Trust planned to work in partnership to develop a core offer, co-develop integrated models with partners and communities, and create an integrated workforce through education and development of staff. CLCH planned to use a Trust Management System to hold themselves to high standards and use data and evidence, test new ideas, and seek feedback to understand where there were opportunities for improvement.

Jacqui McShannon (Executive Director of People’s Services) spoke about the constructive relationship between CLCH and the Council, noting that it was very solution focused. She said there were difficult issues to grapple with, but there was a mutual desire to work together to achieve the best outcomes. Navneet Willoughby thanked Jacqui McShannon for her comments and agreed that there were challenging problems that could only be solved together.

RESOLVED

1. That the Health and Wellbeing Board noted and commented on the strategy.

To discuss the Board’s work programme and suggest items for future meetings.

The Chair noted that members and partners were welcome to email suggestions for the work programme to the clerk.

To note the following dates of future meetings:

·       3 December 2025

·       18 March 2026

·       22 June 2026

The following dates of future meetings were noted:-

• 3 December 2025 (to be moved to 21 January 2026)
• 18 March 2026
• 22 June 2026