Suzy O’Shea, Head of Engagement, Energize STW

Penny Bason, Head of Joint Partnerships, Shropshire Council/STW ICB

The Board received the joint report of the Head of Engagement, Energize Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin and the Head of Joint Partnerships, Shropshire Council/ Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin ICB – copy attached to the signed Minutes – which provided details of the national strategy ‘Get active: A strategy for the future of sport and physical activity’ as well as Shropshire’s activity offer, infrastructure and programmes to support people to take up physical activity and sport.

A presentation was given – copy of slides attached to the signed Minutes.  The Head of Joint Partnerships introduced and expanded on the report.  She explained that within the last few weeks a National Strategy had been produced, which retained the same five outcomes from its previous strategy, and she drew attention to the three priorities of the new strategy (set out on page 43).  The national strategy also highlighted some evidence around reducing the number of inactive children and adults and how it reduces the burden on the NHS and social care and delivered a combined saving of £7.1b to the UK economy which shows how important physical inactivity is.  Locally, we also have a significant number of people who were inactive but the paper highlighted that activity levels could be improved by sustained input and programmes like ‘Beat the Street’ which demonstrated that when you input into support for people to access activity and to do more, people did more, and when you support that a bit more, people continued to do more.

The Head of Joint Partnerships highlighted that as a local authority and a local authority area there were a wealth of things at our fingertips, including outdoor spaces, leisure facilities, and all kinds of things that could help people to get active however, there were still people who had barriers to getting into that activity.

The Head of Engagement at Energize Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin informed the Board that the report set out all of the work and all of the areas that Energize were involved in and she particularly highlighted the work around the Green Social Prescribing project (which was coming to an end in November) which had been a success over the last few years with NHS Charities coming together with Shropshire Council, Telford and Wrekin Council, Sport England’s ‘Tackling Inequalities’ fund, Energize and Shropshire Wildlife Trust.  The next phase of this project was currently being scoped and would be based on all the intelligence that had been gained across the last two years. 

The Head of Operations drew attention to the three ‘Ls’ (local, low-level and low-cost) and how people could be connected to their green spaces and be made more aware of what was available in their communities, how it linked to the social prescribing system in terms of connecting people better but also for the social prescribers themselves to be more connected to green spaces and the local community that they were serving and she gave an example of the ‘Let’s go outside’ brochure and the Bench to Bench walks. 

Turning to another area, the Head of Engagement discussed their work within schools as part of the ‘Creating Active Schools’ framework which provided a whole system approach whereby physical activity was embedded across the whole school and she played a video as an example from one of the schools they had been working with.  The Head of Operations then went on to give more detail about the programme and the work that had been taking place and whether this model could work in other systems/health and social care settings and a brief discussion ensued. 

The Head of Engagement informed the meeting of an event they were holding around the Creating Active Schools framework on 25 September at the Guildhall to share the findings and next steps. Finally, the Chairman pulled together the next steps for the Board.

RESOLVED:

To note the contents of the report and progress in Shropshire regarding improving levels of activity.