All members of the Board gave a brief update about the work ongoing in their areas and any upcoming work.

Dr Karen Worthington advised that in the NHS in relation to primary care, the NHS had tried to embrace a ‘triage first’ approach to patients. The NHS had deployed and expanded digital initiatives, ensuring patients were able to contact the NHS via phone, online and all GPs were now also offering video consultations. The NHS had rolled out remote working supporting workforce resilience. No GP practices were unable to offer services even during the peak of the pandemic. There were two hubs running for suspected Covid assessments and as numbers of infections are falling, the NHS are revising services and looking at learning from them so they could plan for future waves. The NHS were now looking at resetting primary care and restarting some of the services which had been paused including those focusing on long term conditions, screening and immunisations.

James Blythe advised that all of their structures were working on recovery and there was a South West London Recovery Board now set up. There had been a campaign called ‘NHS is here for you’ aimed at those not presenting at health settings, particularly those who had symptoms of or incidents of heart attacks, strokes and cancer to ensure they were presenting. Referral rates are now increasing, however, rates are still not where they need to be and the NHS has seen some impacts from late presentation.  

Simon Shimmens advised that they were now focusing on how they might re-establish services. The MVSC work with organisations including a focus on BAME organisations on recovery and sustainability. Simon stated that they did support 19 organisations in May to achieve £104,000 of funding and had also had the support of a huge number of volunteers.

Rob Clarke reiterated that members of the Health and Social Care Forum were looking at recovery planning as they move forwards and would also do some analysis of the gaps particularly on preventative services. Rob advised that they needed to think about the issue of digital exclusion as those who struggle to access services usually will continue to be and potentially more so if services become more of a digital by default model. The Chair noted that this should be revisited with the Board.

Dave Curtis (Healthwatch) advised they had paused the majority of activity in March and asked how they can support the BAME work planned.   

Brian Dillon (Healthwatch Chair and Treasurer of MVSC) stated there was a concern for budgets and with any new demand going forward he was concerned about budgets and resources declining at a point when they would need to draw more resources.

The Director of Children Schools and Families advised that schools had been open for keyworker children and vulnerable children throughout the pandemic, including over the Easter holidays, and over the end of May half term. Since the beginning of June schools had opened more widely to Reception, Year 1, Year 6 and Nursery year groups and from 15^th June to Year 10 and 12. Schools had seen a steady increase in the number of children in schools, with more than 4500 children in school in Merton on 22^nd June 2020. Schools had also been providing education resources to those at home.

In relation to vulnerable children, staff were spending more time interacting virtually to make contact, but sometimes there is a need to visit in person and so social workers and others had been undertaking visits and seeing children to ensure safety.  Supervised contact was taking place virtually, where required, and the service was continuing to make arrangements for children in care to spend time with their birth families. This was increasingly being done virtually. 

The Children Schools and Families Department never saw a reduction of more than 20% of staffing and had been over 80% staffed for a long time, so they could continue with their work. At the start of lockdown there had been a reduction in referrals as children weren’t being seen, those these had risen in more recent weeks and as children return to school and become more visible, it was expected that referrals will increase further. It was therefore anticipated that the peak of the impact on that part of the service will be later in the year after the initial health impact has perhaps reduced.

In regards to the impact on children’s health, there had been a reduced presentation of children in hospital for other ailments and deaths from common childhood illnesses had increased. The Council had tried to get the message across through schools that children should go in for healthcare when required. The Director was aware that whilst lots of children have enjoyed lockdown there were many for whom there would be a significant impact on their mental health and this would need to be worked on.  

Councillor Stringer stated that there had been tremendous work by all and she had appreciated the communications from the health community.  

The Director of Environment and Regeneration advised there had been a significant impact on promoting healthy places – all services within Environment and Regeneration had been delivered, with the exception of leisure centres, which had been closed since March 23^rd. With the Council’s support to GLL they were anticipating a move to recovery from 6^th July and would be open with a limited offer. Parks and greenspaces had remained open and well used although there had been restrictions on their use. The Council had engaged a contractor to assist the Council and Police to ensure social distancing was followed, and some sports were not being played as usual. Environmental Health had undertaken lots of effort to ensure High Streets and Town Centres could open safely and there had been lots of work by Licensing and Trading Standards in relation to reopening of premises. There had been a significant reduction in car use and, with that, a decrease in levels of air pollution. The reduction in public transport capacity and peoples’ willingness to use it had led to an increase in walking and cycling and the Council were looking at how to build this into the way the Borough moves, including temporary cycle lanes, temporary wider pavements and school streets and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods. The finance available would limit what could be done as the previously provided funding by TFL of £1.5m had been halted with new emergency funding was on a bidding basis, and it was unclear how much Merton would be able to access. There was a Department for Transport pilot on hired electric scooters and Merton had asked to be part of this pilot, which could begin as early as August or September 2020.

The Director of Community and Housing gave an overview of the services provided in peoples’ homes stating that homecare providers had worked incredibly hard as had unpaid carers and this was echoed by the Chair.

Councillor Moulton passed on her thanks and the thanks on behalf of all Councillors for the huge amount everyone had done across all sectors. Councillor Moulton raised the issue of testing within domiciliary care. The Director of Community and Housing responded that testing was challenging, and whilst any care worker who has symptoms can access testing, there was no strategy nationally or direction from Sage as to testing of asymptomatic workers. The Director assured the Board there was a strong voice from all London Boroughs about this issue.