Background to the Board

The health and general wellbeing of Staffordshire's population is determined mainly by the lifestyles and life choices of individuals.

But there are many other determining and influencing factors:

• housing
• transport
• leisure
• employment opportunities
• to community safety
• education
• health
• social care
• voluntary sector services

Each and every one can make a positive, or negative, difference to the future of our population's wellbeing.

Seeing all those things collectively, as a whole 'system' or place, is a massive challenge.

Finding the balance between the different organisational needs of individual public sector bodies versus what is best for the wider population and local areas is tough. Aligning what we do across those different autonomous bodies and ensuring clear responsibility, both locally and countywide, is the biggest challenge. But doing that better than we've done it before is the biggest prize and will also result in the most significant short term and long term improvement to the wellbeing and quality of life for Staffordshire people.

The Health and Wellbeing Board is an amazing opportunity to do that better by bringing together the main strategic fund holders and decision makers. It's about collectively agreeing what we should focus on and ensuring a collaborative approach across different services and functions that can contribute to people's general health and wellbeing.

In short, it's about aligning efforts across different organisations to deliver agreed health and wellbeing outcomes for local communities and individuals across Staffordshire in a way which has not been done before. And although it isn't a quick fix, now is the time to embrace a fundamentally different way to do things. The environment is right!

Financially, the pressures we all face provide opportunities for better collaboration and more effective ways of doing things and proposed legislative changes around public health, clinical and wider commissioning, mean new clarity to help get our collective ducks in a row.

Further information

While the new arrangements provide an excellent opportunity, they also raise many questions about what this means in reality.

If you want to know anything which is not answered please get in touch by email (StaffsHWBB@staffordshire.gov.uk) and we will do our best to help.