The Health and Wellbeing Board was introduced by the
Health and Social Care Act 2012 which required that top tier
authorities (i.e. Unitary and County Councils) establish a Board by
1 April 2013.
The
statutory functions of the Board include:
·
To prepare a Joint
Strategic Assessment (JSNA); a Pharmaceutical
Needs Assessment (PNA) and Joint
Health and Wellbeing Strategy (JHWS).
·
A duty to encourage integrated working
between health and social care commissioners in connection with the
provision of health and social care services;
·
A power to encourage close working
between commissioners and health-related services and the board
itself; and
·
A power to
encourage close working
between commissioners of health-related services and commissioners
of health and social care services.
During the pandemic the government has also asked
Health and Wellbeing Boards to play an important role in
communicating Outbreak Management Plans to partners and the public.
Wiltshire’s Plan has been agreed by the co-chairs of the
Health and Wellbeing Board – Cllr Philip Whitehead, Leader of
Wiltshire Council and Dr Edd Rendell, Wiltshire Locality Clinical
Lead, BSW CCG – and will be considered in depth at the next
meeting of the Health and Wellbeing Board. It has also been
signed off by the Director of Public
Health and the Chief Executive to ensure our work to contain
outbreaks is clearly guided.
Local Outbreak Management Plan
There are a number of principles underlying the
functioning of the Health and Wellbeing Board. These
include:
·
Shared leadership of a strategic approach
to the health and wellbeing of communities;
·
A commitment to drive real action and
change to improve services and outcomes;
·
Parity between Board members in terms of
their opportunity contribute to the Board’s deliberations,
strategies and activities
·
Shared ownership of the Board by all its
members and accountability to the communities it serves;
and
·
Openness and transparency in the way that
the Board carries out its work.
