(Members Code of Conduct – Part 4A of the Constitution)

To receive disclosures of interests from members and co-opted members on matters to be considered at the meeting. The disclosure must include the nature of the interest.

An interest must also be disclosed in the meeting when it becomes apparent to the member during the meeting.

Notes:

(1)       Members must consider their interests, and act according to the following:

(2)       Disclosable pecuniary interests relate to the Member concerned or their spouse/partner.

(3)       Members in arrears of Council Tax by more than two months must not vote in decisions on, or which might affect, budget calculations, and must disclose at the meeting that this restriction applies to them.  A failure to comply with these requirements is a criminal offence under section 106 of the Local Government Finance Act 1992. 

(4)       Officers must disclose interests in accordance with Council Standing Order 44.

No disclosures of interest were received.

(Access to Information Procedure Rules – Part 3B of the Constitution)

Reports and background papers for agenda items may be inspected by contacting the person shown after each agenda item.  Certain reports and background papers may be restricted. 

Any request to remove the restriction on a report or background paper should be made to the relevant Strategic Director or Assistant Director whose name is shown on the front page of the report. 

If that request is refused, there is a right of appeal to this meeting. 

Please contact the officer shown below in advance of the meeting if you wish to appeal. 

(Su Booth – 07814 073884)

No requests to inspect reports or background papers were received.

Document “M”.

The report of Digital Strategy for Bradford District was presented to the Board.

A PowerPoint presentation was provided giving details on the digital strategy for the district. It was reported that the district has 90.86% of its premises with access to Gigabit capable connectivity leaving 9.14% still to gain this level of access.  62.71% (up from 40% 2022) of premises across the district have Fibre enabled broadband to the Premise (FTTP) leaving 37.29% premises still to receive FTTP.

It was reported that the programme aimed toto target those urban and rural “low spots/not spots” and to work with with BDUK, Bradford was chosen as 1 of 4 pilot areas to engage with the Market to understand reasons for these underdeveloped areas. Work is being undertaken to address this issue.

The officer reported that that there was much work currently being done in the City Centre to ensure businesses and communities had adequate connectivity. There are some difficulties around this: Based on recent figures there could potentially be over 1 million Urban premises that were “sub superfast” with no current plans to upgrade either through commercial build or public intervention.

The Board was provided with details on council actions and interventions to accelerate fibre and mobile connectivity. Details of some digital inclusion highlights were provided, such as Digital Inclusion Index, Digital Inclusion Programme Branding, Digital Unite Platform etc, these programmes aim to address inequalities in digital access.

A short video was presented on virtual Bradford digital twin which was developed alongside the University of Bradford highlighting benefits of a digital twin. Digital twins could help an organisation simulate real situations and their outcomes, ultimately allowing it to make better decisions.

It was reported that the City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council and the University of Bradford seek to establish an AI partnership within the Bradford district as a catalyst for establishing an innovation ecosystem for business in the region and drive knowledge exchange. An ecosystem that would help establish maturity in the processes, better target inward investment for the District, identify cases and collaborative opportunities that addressed societal challenges and boost business growth. This work is under development with workshops for businesses being run.

Following the presentation, Members were given the opportunity to ask questions and comment, the details of which and the responses given are as below.

Members of the Board were concerned regarding connectivity in the city centre and wanted to know if there were any additional steps that could be taken to improve connectivity. In response to this, the officer reported that a lot was being done to address this issue however, the market was very volatile. If all the initiatives were successfully implemented, it could prove positive and improve connectivity in the city centre. It was agreed that the Board would collectively work together to lobby on behalf of the District. 

Another Board member raised concerns regarding the lack of connectivity in the rural areas and young people from these areas not being able to access the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 3.

The report of the Community Safety Partnership (Document “N”) will be submitted to the Board and provides Members with an overview of the District’s strategic approach to addressing issues relating to the ‘Safety of Women and Girls’ (SOWG).

Recommended –

1.    That The Wellbeing Board is asked to support the Safety of Women Girls programme and individual Partnerships are asked to consider what actions can be taken to support the culture shift required to ensure the safety of Women and Girls across the District.

2.    That further work will take place through the Wellbeing Executive and Partnerships to address any potential gaps in the response to the delivery of the SOWG strategy.

3.    That as part of the ongoing consultation process to form a SOWG strategy, the Wellbeing board considers and offers direction that will further support the development of the strategy.

(Michael Churley – 07582 100367)

The report of the Community Safety Partnership (Document “N) was submitted to the Board, which provided Members with an overview of the District’s strategic approach to addressing issues relating to the ‘Safety of Women and Girls’ (SOWG).

The presentation focused on the national, regional and local agenda, data and good practice in response to SOWG and recognised the need to think holistically and differently across the ‘system thinking’ approach to meet the challenge. The report presenters suggested that, by addressing the issues collectively, we could create a positive shift in outcomes for women and girls across the District.

It was reported that there work has been done to increase awareness on issues affecting women. Consultations have been taking place to understand the experiences of women and girls and these are summerised in the paper. Primary/secondary schools, colleges, and Youth Services were engaging in tailor made consultations that were aligned to the Ofsted Framework specifically to RSHE, and Citizenship to ensure the voices of children and young people were heard and embedded within the local strategy. To date a total of 868 responses had been received with key findings and recommendations, details of which were provided in the report.

It was reported that to ensure a long-term effective response to reduce violence against women and girls, there needed to be more engagement with men and boys. The commissioned early intervention navigator pilot project evidenced the importance of holding perpetrators to account while using trauma-informed engagement as a successful tool for long-term change. In addition to the perpetrator programmes, there needed to be an increase in education of men and boys and support to the education sector to lead on some of these conversations.  The plan was to develop a cross system group that supported each partnership through their equality lens to contribute to SOWG in their respective work areas which would provide the “golden thread” response needed for Bradford to achieve sustainable changes in outcomes.

It was reported that workshops were planned to identify how well the current resources were being used, identify how well work was coordinated to see what was being done collectively to add value and to also identify any gaps in delivery.  The aim is to bring all the different initiatives and projects together.

Following the presentation, Members were given the opportunity to ask questions and comment, the details of which and the responses given are as below.

The Chair and members of the Board were supportive of the Strategy and were keen to tackle this issue at all levels.

A Board member asked if there was any further information of data breakdown around problematic areas. In response to this, the presenting officer reported that the hotspots would be in places of higher depravation.

A member of the Board commented that the Strategy aligned with the West Yorkshire Police Framework and that the work around the safety of girls and women had increased significantly including incidents taking place online which also contributed to an increase  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

The report of the Director of Public Health (Document “O”) will be submitted and presents the Bradford Child Death Overview Panel (CDOP) and gives an overview of all deaths reviewed by the CDOP in the years 2021-22 and 2022-23, describes some of the actions undertaken by the partnership to reduce the risk of future deaths, and makes recommendations for further action.

Recommended –

 That Board members be invited to review the recommendations and to reflect on how they may be able to contribute to their delivery.

Environmental risk factors:

1. Services and planners of services should work together to ensure that families with children have opportunities to access all the financial assistance they are eligible for.

2. Ensure that women have good access to pre-conception health advice. This should not be limited to women seeking medical advice, but should be available to all women, regardless of pregnancy status.

Service provision:

3. Ensure that children and families in more socioeconomically deprived parts of Bradford have good access to services including maternity, health visiting, school nursing, social care, and education. This may include considerations of timing, location and transport to services, and of the language, both written and spoken, used to communicate messages and information to families.

4. Continue, learn from, and expand on the current work to increase cultural competency of the maternity and children & young people’s workforce, with the aim to ensure that children and families from ethnic minority backgrounds have equitable access to culturally competent services.

5. Services and organisations must work to identify needs of children and families, and to refer to appropriate services as needed. Strong partnership working and referral pathways between services will be key to this.

6. CDOP must ensure strong partnerships with the Bradford Children’s Trust and with the Safeguarding Partnership, and that the bodies are sighted on the findings and recommendations set out in this report.

Individual risk factors:

7. Work through schools, colleges and communities to educate children and young people on safety messages should be undertaken. This may include information on swimming safely, road safety, drug and alcohol messaging, and general hazard awareness.

8. Links should be strengthened between the suicide prevention board and the CDOP panel.

9. Continue the work on genetic literacy and culturally competent service provision through the Every Baby Matters steering group.

10. Promote universal messaging for all new parents on safe sleep. This should be consistent across services and professionals to ensure that advice is the same, whoever is delivering it.

11. Provide advice for parents on safety in and outside of the home.

Process:

12.  The terms of reference and operation of CDOP should be regularly reviewed to guarantee continual quality improvement of the process, and to ensure that the meeting continues to model best practice.

(Sarah Exall – 07855 177158)

The report of the Director of Public Health (Document “O”) was submitted and presented the Bradford Child Death Overview Panel (CDOP) and gave an overview of all deaths reviewed by the CDOP in the years 2021-22 and 2022-23, describes some of the actions undertaken by the partnership to reduce the risk of future deaths, and made recommendations for further action.

The report covered an introduction to CDOP and the processes followed, outline of the demographics of children and young people in the District, demographics of children and young people reviewed by Bradford CDOP in the reporting period, causes of death, risk factors, and modifiable factors related to child deaths in the District, local actions over the past year to reduce the risk of child death, and recommendations for the future.

Following the presentation, Members were given the opportunity to ask questions and comment, the details of which and the responses given are as below.

The Chair of the Board thanked the presenting officer for the report and offered condolences to all the families who had lost children.

One of the risk factors was cosleeping which has resulted in cot deaths, so the importance of parents being able to provide safe sleeping arrangements were emphasised. Initiatives are in place to provide safe sleeping resources to communities through the Sure start grant and Work continues to be done to raise awareness and access to these initiatives through the Better Health Better Lives programme. it was reported that information on the service is made available every pregnant woman that was booked. Work had been carried out to raise awareness of vouchers and benefits that were available to families and to provide important information around health and safety and warm homes including providing 3000 room thermometers to help families to keep their homes at the correct temperature. It was reported that the genetics project that was provided raised awareness and understanding among communities and among anyone who was at a higher risk of genetic issues as this is also a contributing factor to child deaths.

Another member of the Board suggested that there should be free transportation for pregnant women to allow them to attend appointments and more should be invested on interpreters to allow parity in access to services.  In response to this, the presenting officer advised that the maternity transport had been raised at the Health Overview and Scrutiny Board and work relating to this was still ongoing.

A member of the Board asked if the service engaged with religious communities-particularly where there are issues around loss to provide support for familiesIn response to this,

The presenting officer reported that the cultural competency training was on offer to everyone in the maternity and children’s services. There were 6 individuals from across place from different organisations that were identified to do the train the trainer. Further work will take place to work with faith settings to understand if there are additional actions that can be taken to support families. 

Resolved –  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

The report of the Better Care Fund (Document “P”) will be submitted to the Board in order to:

1.          Inform the Health and Wellbeing Board of the Quarter 2 position for the Better Care Fund 2023-24.

2.          Provide assurance that the Better Care Fund Plan is meeting the national requirements and policies.

Recommended –

That the report be noted.

(Javeid Karim – 01274 431685)

The report of the Better Care Fund (Document “P”) was submitted to the Board in order to:

1.       Inform the Health and Wellbeing Board of the Quarter 2 position for the Better Care Fund 2023-24.

2.       Provide assurance that the Better Care Fund Plan is meeting the national requirements and policies.

Resolved –

That the report (Document “P) be noted.