FOR INFO - SPG Minute June 25
North Ayrshire Council · 13 November 2025
Back to Integration Joint Board — 13 November 2025 and its agenda
Text extracted from the council's PDF. Layout and reading order may differ from the original.
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NORTH AYRSHIRE Health and Social Care Partnership Delivering care together Minutes of North Ayrshire Strategic Planning Group Meeting Held on Wednesday 04 June 2025, 10:00am Virtually via MS Teams Present: Councillor Margaret Johnson (Chair) Councillor Anthea Dickson, Provost, NAC Alison Mcallister, Library & Information Services Manager, NAC Dominic Jarrett, AA Learning Disability Service Fiona Comrie, KA Leisure Katie Bell, Team Manager, Housing, NAC Kerry Logan, Head of Service, Health & Community Care Michelle Sutherland, Partnership Facilitator, NA HSCP Lee Ballantyne, Senior Manager, Strategic Planning & Transformation Lisa Davidson, Assistant Director Public Health, NHS Rebecca Black, Partnership Engagement Officer, HSCP Seony Ross, Team Manager, Strategic Planning & Equalities Sharon Hackney, Senior Manager, Allied Health Professions Peter McArthur, Senior Manager, Mental Health - Addiction Services Apologies Received: Joyce White, Vice Chair Caroline Cameron, Director, NAHSCP Betty Saunders, Senior Manager, NAHSCP Billy Brotherston, Independent Chair, NA ADP Darren Fullarton, Associate Nurse Director, NAHSCP Debbie Browne, Depute Medical Director, NHS Elizabeth Stewart, Head of Service, NAHSCP Gillian Arnold, Assistant Director, Planning & Commissioning, NHS Iain Jamieson, Clinical Director, North Ayrshire HSCP Jennifer McGhee, Policy & Community Planning Officer, NAC Michael McLennan, Lead Officer, ADP Nicola Teager, Communication & Engagement Officer, NAHSCP Scott Hunter, Chief Social Work Officer Thelma Bowers, Head of Service, NAHSCP
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NORTH AYRSHIRE Health and Social Care Partnership Delivering care together Item Item Action 1. Welcome and Introductions 2.1 Update from Chair Cllr Johnson, Chair, thanked Joyce White for her tenure as Chair, and acknowledged that Joyce will now take over as Chair of the IJB. Cllr Johnson highlighted that the final Partnership Performance report will be presented to IJB on 19th June and will outline 2024/25 financial position. The Partnership is awaiting the final confirmation from NHS, and final Council position is an overspend of £2.03million, which is an improvement on previously reported position. Yesterday’s Cabinet meeting approved a non-recurring budget transfer of £2.03million, which will go some way to supporting the future sustainability of Social Care services in North Ayrshire. 3. Minutes of Meeting held March 2025 3.1 The minutes of the meeting held March 2025 were agreed as an accurate reflection of discussion. Focus on: Strategic Planning 4. Strategic Plan Progress Update Seony Ross provided an update on how the Strategic Plan is progressing, and shared a table with a timeline of progress to date. An evaluation of the current plan was undertaken in December 2024, to understand what needed to be changed, continued or removed in the updated version of the plan, based on what has been achieved between 2022 – 2025. Seony highlighted a number of things that were achieved during this time, including service advances such as change to the Carers Support Model through Carers Gateway, increased support for children with guardians with substance issues, and embedding of Money Smart services with GPs; also evidence of improved service performance such as improved occupational therapy wait times and reductions in delayed discharges on Arran. This also identified improvements to be made for next iteration of the plan, to make outcome delivery more robust, including links between enabling plans published such as Transformation and Digital Plans and links with Housing which have progressed through work with the Housing Strategy Team. The current plan is also focussed on service delivery, considering how better to measure outcomes and how service delivery is influencing communities.
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NORTH AYRSHIRE Health and Social Care Partnership Delivering care together There are ten chapters is the Strategic Needs assessment outlined in the attached report, but Seony noted that due to the volume of information being analysed completion date has moved to June 2025. This will be shared later in the summer once complete. Seony advised that this exercise has highlighted the key issues in each topic area, and provided some examples of the key issues, outlined in the attached slides: The Engagement analysis was completed in May 2025, and the report is currently being finalised by Rebecca Black. Data from the last two years is being analysed including 47 different engagement pieces, consisting of input from over 2,800 people. Key themes are being identified and broken down to different services; and have highlighted concerns about accessing information to services; digital exclusion, and isolation of parents of children with additional needs. A review of local and national policy was also completed in May 2025 and is being analysed into similar categories. This has meant reviewing national polices such as GIRFEC and the Promise, and local plans such as Children’s Services and Child Poverty plans; ensuring the golden thread between national and local policies. A process of Service Mapping is also in progress to better understand how the HSCP operates and how priorities are being met. Seony highlighted that this will be helpful when looking at service reviews, or opportunities for transformation change as part of the transformation programme. A key part of this is also to gather feedback from individual service on what they want to see from the Strategic Plan. All information is currently being analysed and priorities identified for the plan by the end of June; following this work will be undertaken with SMTs and partner organisation with the plan being collated through the summer and a draft plan prepared by August 2025. The group acknowledge the amount of work that has been undertaken and the volume of data already gathered; Seony highlighted that much of the analysis is already in progress or completed, therefore it should be achievable to have the draft report prepared by August. It was also highlighted that there is a significant change in priorities post pandemic, and enquired whether the collated data will be accessible, as this will be beneficial in other areas of service delivery in terms of highlighting pressures and where resources and support should be focussed. Seony advised that the engagement has built on work already done and has focussed on specific targeted groups, This has meant results are more in depth than simply a specific survey for the Strategic Plan which would only ask general questions. Seony noted that there is also a Locality Survey
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NORTH AYRSHIRE Health and Social Care Partnership Delivering care together which is out for the full year and information is being pulled form this throughout the year, so a constant stream of information is being collated. The group thanked Seony for the work being doing and look forward to an update on the results at the next meeting. 5. HSCP Equality Outcomes 2025 – 29 Seony provided an update on the new Equality Outcomes which were developed between September 2024 and February 2025; beginning with locality planning engagement in September which was carried out with community groups and used for Equality Outcomes as well as Locality Planning, as discussed at previous meetings. Paragraph 2.2 and appendix 2 of the attached paper outlines how the outcomes were reached. The public sector equality duty – to advance equality of opportunity and eliminate discrimination of protected characteristics; and the purpose of the equality outcomes is to further equality duty within services. Each new outcome has a detailed section in the plan outlining why the aims were chosen, where we are now, and where we want to get to; and this is summarised in section 3 of the report. These outcomes were approved by IJB on 1st May, so are now in place. A progress report is required every two years, however an interim update will be presented to the SPG after one year to ensure progress is being made throughout the four year period towards achieving outcomes. The group were encouraged to become familiar with the outcomes and consider how they may be embedded within services, and circulated across teams. Cllr Dickson highlighted concerns that this could be one of the more difficult reports to include within the Strategic Plan, and will be much more open to scrutiny and questioning. The group discussed that with changes in society and more vocal people being less tolerant, trying to narrow gaps, this likely to be queried and more difficult to deliver; but highlighted that this progress and will result in improvements. Members highlighted the rich diversity of partners working across the HSCP in North Ayrshire, particularly those in community organisations, and how this will be of benefit to them. The group agreed that they are looking forward to a further update on the work being done and the input of this work to the overall strategic plan. Focus on: Service Planning
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NORTH AYRSHIRE Health and Social Care Partnership Delivering care together 6. Learning Disability Service Learning Plan Dominic Jarrett provided a presentation to the SPG regarding the Learning Disability Service Learning Plan. The last strategy was published in 2017 and ran for 3 years, and in recent years there has been a refreshed consideration of the relevance of a strategic document around Learning Disabilities. Dominic highlighted that there is a constantly changing landscape of challenges and opportunities and therefore the LD transformation board agreed a different approach to the LD strategic plan, that was less about demonstrating actions to be pursued, and more about committing to an ongoing process of communication and collaboration, with the intention of becoming better at listening, sharing information and working alongside people. As a result, two different documents have been produced – one fully accessible document that came out of engagement work with clients, carers and provider partners; and along with this a more complex document that describes data and more detail about what is happening in the service. It is anticipated that these will engage slightly different audiences, and gives people the choice on what they want to engage with. Dominic noted that this is currently going through a process of review and signing off before being more widely published; and the service are confident that this is going to be successful. The ambition is for a yearly update to be provided, with ongoing communications throughout the year. Dominic highlighted that unfortunately the service have recently lost an Engagement Officer post, however are hopeful of engaging with service and third sector partners across North Ayrshire to help realise ambitions with co- designing engagement activity. Dominic gave an example of recent work being done with Public Health Scotland around the health needs of the identified Learning Disability population of North Ayrshire, with the ambition of undertaking this information gathering annually; with the aim that over time this will allow the service to demonstrate and understand the changing needs of the local population. Both documents have been shared with the Strategic Planning Group and members are encouraged to review and engage with both. 7. Interface Guidance: Co-occurring Mental Health and Substance Use Peter McArthur, Senior Manager provided an update regarding work being undertaken across Mental Health and associated services including alcohol and drug services, looking at the pathway for providing support for individuals with co-occurring mental health and drug misuse. The focus of this work is on the role of leadership and the impact this has on developing support. The service has set up secondary care alcohol and drug services, primarily NADARS which include MH practitioners, RMNs, OT, psychiatry, psychology, and integrated social care and community mental health services, and has
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NORTH AYRSHIRE Health and Social Care Partnership Delivering care together been widened out to include elderly mental health, Learning disability services, and inpatient services including Ward 5. The desire was to update the interface guidance to make the pathway and journey for individuals accessing support easier and simpler. The aim has been to provide quick, non complicated, no barrier access to support, designed to be complementary to support provided via community based services. The service felt it important to seek views and guidance of service user, family members and other stakeholders; at all stages; and a national operation group was established to review current guidance. Guidance was reviewed locally by senior managers team managers, team leads, and later sought wider national review which was approved and implements. A new senior steering group was created, chaired by Thelma Bowers, involving, senior managers, professional leads, lived experience and digital service support functions; who reviewed and implement guidance. Peter advised that staff awareness sessions have been delivered, attended by over 200 members of staff over 7 sessions, with further sessions planned later in the year. Implementation began in November 2024, and is currently in a ‘sustaining’ phase; and currently the service is gathering more experience-based feedback, from service users, family members and carers; and are currently being supported by the Alcohol and Drug Partnership team who are also gathering feedback for implementation of other drug and alcohol strategies such as medication assisted treatment standards. Peter provided the attached matrix chart which breaks down mental health conditions from most severe to less severe, coupled with less to more severe alcohol and drug misuse; this also highlights community based responses and specialist secondary care responses; who would lead or what areas would jointly work. The interface then outlines what services should work together, who should lead on what different type of scenario. This new pathway has now been adopted across the service, and feedback has been positive from staff and service users with further information being gathered over the next few months. This has also been used by services in East and South Ayrshire who have adopted a similar approach. Work is also underway with Health Improvement Scotland which is influencing national guidance and pathways. The service have been asked to present at national meetings ang groups and the interface and case studies have been used nationally as an example of good practice. The pathway and guidance behind this interface can be shared with members of the group. Staff are using this protocol and feedback both locally and nationally is being gathered, which can be updated to the group at a later date.
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NORTH AYRSHIRE Health and Social Care Partnership Delivering care together AOCB 8. Collaboration for Health Equity in Scotland Michelle Sutherland joined the meeting to provide an update around the CHES work being undertaken following the previous meeting. Michelle noted that the Steering Group has held its first meeting and will be meeting again this afternoon to consider the options around setting priorities for the Marmott Principles. An analysis exercise has been undertaken at locality level around social determinants in North Ayrshire, for example Child Poverty levels, employability, and health. At this stage, the Marmott Principles that have the most evidence attached are around giving every child the best start in life, creating fair employment and strengthening the role of health prevention. The Steering Group will also look this afternoon at what engagement with communities will look like – Michelle noted that there is a good foundation of people working together across North Ayrshire – and this will be brought forward into informing the Strategic Plan. Michelle advised that an update around the principles and priorities of the work of the Steering Group will be brought to a future Strategic Planning Group, which will hopefully also include an engagement plan. - There was no other business to be discussed and the meeting was closed. Note from the chair that the next meeting will take place in person, Wednesday 3rd September, 10am – 12pm; at Fullarton Connexions, Irvine. 9. Date of Meetings – 2025 - Wednesday 3rd September, 10am – 12pm; Fullarton Connexions - Wednesday 26th November, 10am – 12pm; via MS Teams