Minutes of Meeting Adult Autism Partnership Board Thursday 20 th July Room E1A, County Hall Chelmsford

Transcription

1 Minutes of Meeting Adult Autism Partnership Board Thursday 20 th July Room E1A, County Hall Chelmsford Attendees Chair Co-Chair Guests Apologies Anna Saunders (AS), Head of Commissioning Vulnerable People, ECC Wendy Burt (WB), Essex Carers Network Maria Thomas (MT), Senior Commissioning Officer, ECC Simon Dickinson (SD), Project Manager, TSU, ECC Nina Viljoen (NV), HPFT Sarah Pemberton (SP), Mid Essex CCG Avril O Sullivan (AOS), Rachel Grey (), Job Centre Plus, DWP Mitch Matthews (MM), Job Centre Plus, DWP Marian Redding (MR), Healthwatch Essex Karen Brown (KB), support Andrew Hensman Andrew Hensman (AH) Sharon Allison (SA), Aspergers Service Jenny Manahan (JM), EPUT Kim Gisby (KG), Commissioning Delivery Manager, ECC Val Cleare (VC), minute taker, ECC Mathilda Hodnett, shadow minute taker, ECC Rhiane Green (), National Autistic Society South West Essex CCG Essex CCG PACT Harlow Autism Anglia Carolann Jackson (CJ), President of SAFE and Co-Chair of Adult Autism Partnership Board Item Action 1. Introductions were made and apologies noted as above. It was noted that Carolann Jackson had broken her hip and it will be another two months before she is back to being mobile. It was agreed to send her some flowers on behalf of the Adult Autism Partnership Board. 2. Notes of Previous Meeting and Actions arising: Page 1 of 6

2 Item 2: Engagement work AS spoke about Reach. There were challenges for Healthwatch Insight. Received feedback that they felt their voices were not heard. There needs to be a communication about the next steps. AS asked for a group of people to look at the recommendations and think about what to do to make this happen. There will be some from ECC and some with life experience from a range of areas. Gemma Warsap from the Engagement Team to look at recruiting people. There was talk about five channels. For example, through partnership groups, through building on local action groups and do these channels work, who they work for and reasonable adjustments for different groups of people and it is really important to make sure that people from the autistic community have ability to fit into this. Action: Make sure that Gemma includes people from the autistic community. GW There was not enough for a full model for recommendations. There is a need to use people s live experience. Action: to go out with the minutes to share to groups and places represented. Page 4: regarding Kirsty O Callaghan (KO C) leading the Diagnosis Task and Finish Group. It was noted that KO C had changed roles. It is now not part of her role to lead the group. There is a need to find someone else. Action: SP offered to take this away and sort out who will lead the Task and Finish Group. SP WB had produced a one page profile about herself. AS proposed that members of the group send their profiles in and comments to be fed back in a fixed timeframe with the minutes and to be adopted at the next meeting. 3. Task and Finish Activity: Planning/Transforming Care Simon Dickinson said that this is an important piece of work to NHS England nationally and jointly sponsored by Social Services nationally. The objective is to improve outcomes and number of crises of people who have autism and learning difficulties. SD described a programme where there were 73 people at the start who had been in mental institution for a long time. There is a national programme which is aimed at reducing this number over 3 years. Generally discharge people who have been in hospital for a long time and better community support provided. We have got sponsorship from Southend, Essex and Thurrock along with 7 CCGs. The focus is around complex people and moving these people out of these institutions. We are planning sponsorship by this partnership board and putting together a Page 2 of 6

3 3-4 months piece of work. The aim is to: - To get a better understanding of the outcomes of people who have autism and to analyse the data. - To run in depth conversations with people who have ended up in crises. Work has started. Five individuals have been and now an additional ten people are coming to workshops to share their experience. - To look at the current service provision and what is made available for people.. What services are there, which are targeted? Mainstream to recognition of particular adjustments for people who have autism and service to make reasonable adjustments and put pathway in place. The outcome in November will be: what do we feel ought to be different in that pathway which recognises people s conditions of autism There is a need to make decisions and ensure people with autism are involved. Decisions to come back to this Board and get the CCGs to sign up. SD Are the Police involved? It was confirmed that they are involved. Prevention is key and going forward SD is going to attend the Reducing Re-Offending Partnership Board and as a project board work alongside and similarly this will be done in Southend and Thurrock. SD asked if anyone would like to get involved to link with AH and have exchange of s. It was noted that AH works with the Probation. We do skills workshops. We are trying to pilot something with CJS for people with autism. Work on a joint strategic needs assessment had started which will be All Age Autism. It will be important from the commissioning point of view that this will be available to districts, health and anyone in Essex that has planning that they need to do. We are working through on the JSNA that this is what we know and we need to know more about in the future about people s diagnosis. It will still be a work in progress and comments required. 4. Task and Finish Activity: Multi Agency Training Plan Sarah Pemberton (SP) gave an overview. Some areas are impressed with training. Police, and also with primary care (Provide) where this is compulsory for new joiners. SP was disappointed with Citizens Advice Bureau with no training offered. There was some confusion around training offered for Job Centre as central Learning and Development Teams had provided inconsistent advice against members of the Adult Autism Partnership Board. Marian Redding on behalf of Healthwatch Essex spoke about people s assessments annually in hospitals. They assess the environment and is it Page 3 of 6

4 dementia friendly. Autism does not appear to be on the agenda. Action: There is a need to look at environments and get autism included. MR, Healthwatch to take this forward to Quality Heads. Action: An area which needs to be targeted is GPs surgeries in order to train for an increased understanding of autism. Ola Williams (OW) and SP to contact GPs surgeries. Need to find out what training is offered and get a cross-over with partners and engagement with people with autism for that training. Karen Brown (KB) gave an example how she supports Andrew Hensman (AH) and the difficulties which he experienced when they went to the doctor s surgery when communicating with the receptionists. Action: SP to provide training plan to focus on GP staff SP said that the next step will be to contact Probation which is dealing with prolific offenders. Action: MT to send to SP the community rehabilitation contact. MR OW/ SP SP MT 5. Task and Finish Activity: Employment Mich Matthews (MM) gave an update on the progress of the statutory guidance around Job Centres how to take this forward. There is a new system whereby a business case has been written aimed at securing the right support and coaching package for people with autism or autistic traits who are looking for work. There have been 2 members of the team including Jackie Philipps who have been out and about to gather details of what additional support this customer group need. The details gathered where used to shape the business case. Funding will be for Essex for 50 people to start. It is aimed at people with ASD/ASC (clients do not need to have been diagnosed with autism) With regard to smaller businesses there are new community partners in place who will be going out and promoting Disability confidence and will be asking about training, work experience, work placements and employment. It is about building up knowledge and transferring of skills. Will work with smaller employers and match up with issues about getting people back to work. There will be personal one-to-ones with coaches. Disability Confident background -ECC was approached 18 months ago by the DWP about moving to being disability confident employer. The aim is to be Level 3 disability confident leader. In order to be Level 3, it is necessary to have an action plan of what we want to do. In Essex Gavin Jones has introduced a process where each area has a new organisation strategy. Each business plan has a section on equalities. It is a mandatory objective with Page 4 of 6

5 each Leadership Team to think how they will address disability confident. Three important issues: Gavin Jones, Chief Executive, ECC met with Mike Adams, Chief Executive, Purple regarding the benefits of employing people with disabilities with an Art of the Possible Event taking place in October We need to showcase good practice around the county, in particular anything about autism. There will be an event about autism and all adults with disabilities which will focus on employment around barriers and challenges to solve. Action: Rhiane to take this back to the Autistic Society. Action: MM and to take this information back to the DWP in preparation for the Art of the Possible festival. It was agreed to set up a working group on these issues. Action: MT to arrange project management support on this. MM/ MT 6. NAS Presentation Too much Information/ 2 October 2017 at 10 am Campaign MR read an about promoting sporting events to support people with disabilities. Rhiane Green () gave a presentation. provides branch and campaign support in Central England. She stressed the importance of the TMI campaign if any local issues concerned about to campaign on to support this. There is to be a launch of Autism Hour on 2 nd October Q. Will the business be expected to be autism friendly all the time? A. For the autism hour, just to implement it for that hour. It could be that businesses agree on a certain time of the day to be more autism friendly. Q. How will the organisation know and change business to be more autism friendly and more autism aware? A. It is about empathy and understanding. There are small things which employers can do. Q. Social media and is it part of the campaign? A. Yes. TMI stuff is on Facebook. We need to talk to our Communications Team and get information about lots of businesses doing things. Q. Why are you saying autistic people? You are just giving someone a label. Page 5 of 6

6 It is offensive. A. That is how the NAS speaks about those with autism following our research and conversations with autistic people and their families. Next steps: Everyone in businesses should get involved. Also community learning teams. Could distribute leaflets via care homes. As a partnership board we need to encourage as many people to get involved including getting businesses to sign up. ECC are thinking about how to contribute. Do we want to use the session as part of the follow on Art of the Possible (last 2 weeks of October)? Action: Further discussion with and MT /MT 7. Any other Business and Date of Next Meeting: MR suggested pioneering initiative and providing support opportunities regarding autism that could be advertised. MT suggested this could be advertised on the autism information hub. will be meeting with Andrew soon with regard to the group becoming officially an NAS branch. Date of Next Meeting: January 2018 (date to be confirmed) Page 6 of 6