Issue - meetings

See attached annex

Councillor Phillips had given notice of the following question to Councillor Hibbert Biles:

‘I am disappointed to note in the Business Management and Monitoring Report Q3 that all Public Health indicators are below target. How long is the Cabinet Member going to tolerate this situation and when can we expect targets to be met in the following areas ?
-       % of Primary School children classed as obese in Year 6
-       % of people offered a health check who have taken up the offer
-       Number of people who have received a health check that were identified as high cardiovascular risk
-       Support 3800 people to become ‘’4 week quitters per annum
-       Number of opiate users who left drug treatment successfully who do not represent for treatment again within 6 months as a percentage of the total number of non-opiate users in treatment
-       Number of non-opiate users who left drug treatment successfully who do not represent again within 6 months as a percentage of the total number of non-opiate users in treatment’

Councillor Hibbert Biles replied:

“The Cabinet member does not tolerate the situation, but has deliberately approved ambitious targets through the Health and Wellbeing Board to help the many organisations who are responsible to take a serious approach to Public Health issues and so keep an upward pressure on improvement.. The red targets should therefore be seen as the cabinet's fearless determination to tackle these problems head -on. The truth is that either Oxfordshire is already successful compared with elsewhere or is taking vigorous and successful action to improve the health of local people.

For example:

Childhood obesity: Oxfordshire already is well ahead of the national average and obesity is low (16.9% compared with 19.1%.). Obesity is everyone's business and all individuals, families and organisations have a role to play. The target is deliberately ambitious to encourage partners such as schools and District councils to continue to play their part. We have worked closely with schools to make sure that a very high proportion of our children are weighed and measured each year, and we believe that this thoroughness makes Oxfordshire's figure slightly higher than in authorities where more children opt out of the test.

Health checks: we have the best performance on health checks in the Region and outstrip national performance (48.3%  for Oxfordshire compared to 47.5% for Thames Valley and 46.4% for England). We pay general practices to carry out these checks and we keep the target ambitiously high to get the best performance from general practice and so give the people of Oxfordshire the best value for money. Oxfordshire has used an innovative approach to monitoring these contracts and is a leader on the national stage.

Smoking cessation: There has been a national trend which has shown a 20% fall in successful quitters across the board In 2014/15 and the numbers of smoking quitters in Oxfordshire followed this trend.. We were not complacent about this however and so we have  ...  view the full minutes text for item 31