Willesden Neighbourhood Health and Wellbeing Workshop - June 29th from 1pm at Ashford Place Community Centre

 We would like to hear from you!

 

Join us for an interactive afternoon discussing care, wellbeing and health provision in Willesden Green, Cricklewood & Mapesbury, and Dollis Hill. This workshop is a key opportunity to share your thoughts and experiences on the current state of services in our neighbourhood, and work collaboratively to address and prevent health inequalities.

 

The event will take place on Thursday, June 29th, 2023 from 1 PM at Ashford Place Community Centre, 60 Ashford Road, London, NW2 6TU. We will start the event with half an hour of lunch and networking before beginning our discussions.

 

During the workshop we want to hear from you on a range of topics including the challenges faced by children, young people and their families today, what you want to see from the future of health and care in the Willesden neighbourhood, and potential solutions to improve the quality of wellbeing, health and care in our community.

 

This is a great opportunity to have your voice heard and contribute to the ongoing conversation about wellbeing, health and care in the Willesden neighbourhood. We look forward to seeing you there!

 

TICKETS

Peer Support Group at Chalkhill Community Centre - next meeting April 6th

Click on image to enlarge

Alarm bells should ring! 'NW London NHS 'Transformation Plan' to be discussed on Monday at Brent Civic Centre

From Brent Patient Voice LINK

For the first time since the local NHS and Council bureaucracies started drawing up the NW London Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP) in January of this year, they are going to allow members of the great unwashed British public to discuss it in a face to face meeting on 26 September.

Cllr Krupesh Hirani, Chair of Brent’s Health & Wellbeing Board, responding to a BPV Steering Group Member, writes:

I am hosting a Public Engagement event where anyone can attend on Monday 26th September at 6pm (Brent Civic Centre – Grand Hall).

The Health and Wellbeing Board is on Thursday 6th October at 7PM (Brent Civic Centre – Boardroom). 

The Plan claims to be able to save £1.3billion from the NW London health budget by 2020 and at the same time make lots of improvements to your care. Do you believe it?

Meanwhile in another part of the wood the Chief of NHS Providers (hospital trusts around the country) says “the NHS can no longer deliver what is being asked of it for the funding available.” Observer 11.09.16. It seems he has not heard of the STPs – or does not believe in them.

Energy Solutions must stay to protect the poor from fuel poverty

One of the most troubling aspects of the current round of cuts is that organisations that contribute to long term stability and long-term savings in expenditure are losing their funding in order to balance current budgets. Sometimes those long-term costs are paid by individuals or departments outside the Council: cost shunting.  This is the case with the Stonebridge Adventure Playground and the Youth Service where long term costs of the loss of those services may be picked up by the criminal justice system or mental health - much more expensive in the long run and often at the social expense of ruined lives.

Energy Solutions is another such case:

Energy Solutions who are housed in the chapel building close to the Welsh Harp Environmental Study Centre in Birchen Grove also threatened with closure, have a long term aim of reducing the carbon footprint of the borough contributing to the fight against climate change.  In the process they are helping residents, landlords, schools and businesses reduce fuel bills and emissions and providing a vital educational function.

They work with local organisations such as Citizens Advice Bureau and AgeUKBrent.
 
 

--> During the period since January 2012, Energy Solution clients have benefited in excess of £717,000 in disputed or refunded gas and electricity bills, trust fund applications and ECO funded affordable warmth measures (heating and insulation).
This figure could have been considerably higher if DECC/ECO funding for heating and insulation upgrades had not dried up early in 2014, and if Energy Solutions had been able to find funding for health and wellbeing based referrals.

Much of their time is spent trying to find funds from pension funds, friendly societies and other legacy organisations, this has resulted some good outcomes - recently the banking benevolent fund paid for a new boiler for a pensioner who didn’t qualify through benefit proxies but was none the less in hardship.

It is cases like these that the organisation find most challenging, where need is great - and often urgent, but  proxy profiling takes no account of individual circumstances, so there is little they can offer other than a personal visit and the provision of advice on how to make the most of the assets they have in terms of behavioural change, tariff or energy company switching and energy saving advice.

Their new ‘Boilers on Prescription’ funding approach is aimed at Public/NHS health and Adult Social Care services in Brent and is unique in that it proposes to prioritise patients/residents living in cold homes based on their clinical need rather than the benefit proxy. Health and wellbeing first and all the other, often conflicting issues, around housing, family ‘obligations’, and conflicted interests later.
Energy Solutions’ approach to Social Prescribing has been described elsewhere, but the ‘Boilers on Prescription’  LINK hub concept they propose could be extended into long term help and assistance from the third sector to make it easier to move vulnerable private tenants into more suitable housing, and provide a holistic circle of support to help improve social isolation, loneliness and mental stress - saving countless ££££’s to the local authority, Public Health and the NWLHCT, the CCG.

In the words of Dr Tim Ballard, Vice Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, “What’s not to like?”


The proposal in Brent Council's budget consultation states baldly:

Cease grant to Energy Solutions. Discontinuation of grant  for the provision of energy efficiency / fuel poverty advice.

The grant is just £50,000.Energy Solutions must stay

It comes with the virtual abolition of the Environment Department and the ending of many of Brent's green initiatives. The Council has made public statements about fuel poverty and only in December 2014 announced a series of roadshows on energy saving LINK

In his 'My Priorities' blog in  December 2012 LINK   Muhammed Butt, leader of Brent Council said:

Too many people in our community live in fuel poverty - unable to afford to turn the heating on over Christmas. That is why we will launch a Brent Collective Switching scheme.

But the answer is more than just switching and the work that Energy Solutions does with the poor, the elderly, the sick and with schools and other organisations is absolutely vital.

If the Council's aim is to protect the vulnerable, then Energy Solutions must not be cut. If it is serious about its commitment to combating climate change, then Energy Solutions must not be cut. If it wants to invest in the long term wellbeing of the community, then Energy solutions must not be cut.

 More about Energy Solutions work and contacts HERE  

Energy Solutions also collects donations to help those in fuel poverty. Older people who received the extra DWP winter fuel allowance but are not in need may be particularly keen to donate HERE 

The positives and negatives of public health in Brent

Tomorrow's  Brent Health and Wellbeing Board will be discussing an important report on public health and the issues facing the borough in the future. The full report is available HERE

For each issue the report goes into details of some of the initiatives and projects that address the problem so here I will print some of the tables and graphs to stimulate interest.

Brent actually has healthier statistics than some of the areas with equal levels of deprivation but there are considerable differences between different parts of Brent.

The causes of premature deaths:

Differences in age expectancy in wards within the borough:

Increases in rates of dementia are a long-term issue:

As are rates of diabetes:

One area of success has been the reduction in teenage pregnancies:

The figures on child health indicate health problems building up for the future. I have been keen to persuade the Council to increase school nurse provision to address these issues and procurement is in process

Obesity of Year 6 child (11 year olds)

As they go into Year 7 at secondary schools the pupils are likely to use takeways:

To inform the Council’s planning policies, the Council public health team undertook a survey of secondary school students to explore associations between the presence of fast food takeaways close to the school and students’ use of takeaways and general food knowledge. In the seven schools that participated, all year 7 and year 10 students were surveyed. Nearly two and a half thousand students responded resulting in a unique insight into student behaviour. Students who attended schools less than 400m from a takeaway ate more takeaways at lunch, on the journey home from school and at home for their evening meal with their family.

The survey supports the policy of a buffer zone around schools which the Council is now implementing.

Dental health is a particular issue in Brent:

Some excellent preventative work is taking places from the Chalkhill Wellbeing project which ends in March 2015 unless further funding is found. I will return to this in some detail in the future.