Last month was the regular meeting of Bury Council’s Health Scrutiny Panel which looked at the I Will if You Will project, Deferred Payments for Social Care, Lifestyle Change proposal from the NHS and Gluten Free Prescribing. Here is the report from my Lib Dem colleague Cllr Tim Pickstone who represents you on that Committee.

I Will If You Will

The Committee received an update report on the I Will If You Will Project. This is a Government/Sport England funded project to increase the amount of women and girls taking up physical exercise across the whole of Bury.

We received an update not he programme which reported that10,723 unique individuals who have participated in the programmeme, totalling 62,652 attendances at these 7,741 sessions. In the current ‘Phase 2’ of the project there has been a slight slowing down of new people involved, but apparently the actual sessions provided are better attended.

I asked a couple of questions:

– The first was around take-up in the programme in different parts of Bury. Basically in Prestwich and Whitefield, involvement in IWIYW is significantly lower than other parts of Bury (see thee graph below):

 

There wasn’t a clear answer from the team, with a possible reference to cultural differences. I’m not sure I buy that and it seems fairly obvious that the reason is that in the south of the Borough we have don’t actually have a Council sports facility (they are in Ramsbottom, Bury and Radcliffe) – which I guess shows that we need one!

I also asked about the whether or not the project to meeting the (very ambitious) targets that had been set. The targets that IWIYW have been asked to achieve by Sport England are based on a population wide survey of people aged 16+ called the Active People Survey. This equates to an additional 4,000 women participating once a week for 30 minutes (a 5.2% increase), and an additional 10,675 participating by 2020 (a 14% increase).

As I understand it we have actually seen a slight dip in the levels in the last Active People Survey, but apparently the gap between women and men has decreased. (IE men are doing a lot less, women are doing a bit less.)

My view is that I Will If You Will is an excellent thing for Bury. More women, or more people involved in regular physical activity will mean that we live on the whole longer, healthier lives, which can only be a good thing. Hopefully the project will be able to meet its objectives in its remaining years.

Deferred Payments Scheme
The Committee had a presentation on the detailed policy on the Deferrred Payments Scheme. This is where people are able to defer payments for social care when they own a house, without having to sell it straight away). It is quite a detailed subject so probably best to read the policy (which is self explanatory) the link is below.

Lifestyle Change Proposals
NHS Bury is currently at the start of a process to think about whether it should introduce lifestyle change rules on eligibility to healthcare. The basic proposal, which would be consulted widely with the public, would be that people who smoke, or are significantly overweight, would be made to wait for a non-urgent operation, to give them time to try to stop smoking or to lose weight.

If Bury did this it would be the first area in England to do this. As I understand it there are a couple of very good reasons for doing this:

– if you stop smoking or lose weight then the outcome of the non-urgent operation is statistically much better than if you haven’t made the changes
– getting people to stop smoking, or getting people to lose weight, is good for people’s long term health, so anything the NHS can do to encourage this is a good idea.

It is a very complex subject, and the NHS will be consulting very widely on the issue and we will make sure that local people can get involved in this consultation when it happens.

Gluten Free Prescribing

The NHS is Bury is consulting on ending the general process of giving Gluten Free foods on prescription. At present gluten free foods are the only food available on prescription, and it is suggested that this is not the best use of limited NHS resources. The argument is that nowadays a much wider range of gluten-free foods are available.

Any questions please ask. The agenda and papers for the meeting are here.

   Leave a comment