Good health and well-being impact on every aspect of our lives and are central to ensuring people in our communities have the best life opportunities available to them. Supporting and enabling individuals, families and communities to be resilient and have good physical and mental health and well-being is therefore vital so that people are able to benefit from living independently as long as possible and the impacts of health inequalities are reduced.
To continue on our improvement journey to improve health and well-being we will progress our work to integrate and transform our prevention and early help services, working closely with our partners to ensure people get the right support as early as possible, leading to improved outcomes, which in turn lessens the demand on services later on. We will focus on effective front door services and improved information, advice and signposting at first contact. For those that need statutory services we will aim to improve the pathways to the right care.
In delivering good health and well-being we will continue building on the success of our social care services improvement journey to provide the right level of care and support; where all children and vulnerable adults feel, and are, safe, and have the opportunity to reach their potential and lead happy, fulfilled lives and where the voices of individuals are central to practice.
Within this priority we have recognised increasing concerns around mental health support. Good mental health is important at every stage of life and helps determines long term how we make life choices, relate to others and handle stress. We have committed to focusing on improving the support to children and adults to have good mental health. We will do this by working in collaboration with our public service partners, community organisations and other council services, concentrating on early prevention and helping to reduce the incidence of mental health challenges becoming more complex.
Throughout this priority we will work closely with communities, stakeholders and partners to build strong, healthy and resilient communities where people’s physical and mental well-being is maximised and supports people to fulfil their potential.
Our Priority Outcomes; what we want to work towards:
*indicates a Strategic Equality Objective
- There are fewer children that need to be looked after by the council as a result of effective prevention and early-intervention services reducing the need for further intervention.
- Looked after children and young people have access to stable, long term foster care and supported lodging placements (with increased in-house provision), and have good experiences within these placements allowing them to thrive and achieve the outcomes they want.
- People are receiving the right care and support for their needs, in the right place and at the right time, through improved care at home, reablement and occupational therapy capacity (with reduced waiting times for Occupational Therapy assessment), achieved through effective partnership working.
- *Children and adults are supported to have good mental health and well-being, by public services partnerships and communities working together. There is a focus on mental health support provided through prevention and early help mental health services with the aim of reducing demand for services later on.
- All people have access to the right level of care and support for their needs, through the provision of consistent and good quality social care services, supported by the Social Care Improvement Board.
- *We make certain our social care services meet the needs of those who use them by making sure the voice of children, adults, families and carers is heard and listened to.
- Children, Adults and Families are safeguarded by Social Care and statutory partners.
This Priority contributes directly to the following Wales Well-being Goals:
- A healthier Wales
- A more equal Wales
- A Wales of cohesive communities