Gateshead Health and Wellbeing Strategy (Draft update)

We know our health and care services are changing, and demand is increasing as our population gets older and technology advances. We must ensure that our services support everyone's needs. We will involve local communities and the voluntary and community sector in the planning of services to reflect local priorities and needs. We will integrate our health and care services whilst ensuring they are placed based and bespoke to the needs of individuals. 

Our health and care system will measure success in terms of improved wellbeing, independence and social connections. We will try to move existing resources away from expensive acute care provision, so we can reinvest in prevention and early intervention measures. We will keep people who need complex support, living at, or near, home, to have the support of their family and community. 

The action we will take

We will:

• prioritise funding for the prevention of ill-health and high-cost intervention at all levels  

• embed the local VCSE organisations in ill health prevention, planning and delivery 

• integrate how we plan, make decisions and provide health, social care and housing, to respond to needs where people live 

• address inequalities in how we design and deliver our services, to include how we consider health literacy and other barriers to access support  

• ensure that no-one is living in unhealthy or unsafe accommodation  

• monitor the health of people in Gateshead using long-term measures  

• reduce the scale and impact of substance misuse (alcohol, tobacco and drugs) 

• reduce the scale and impact of commercial harms on our residents, challenging industry narratives that normalise use of harmful products and blame individuals  

• design how we work, and what we do recognising and facilitating effective social prescribing approaches 

• adopt a system-wide Make Every Contact Count approach  

• shift to use of technology and digital in our systems, in a way that supports prevention, without excluding our residents  

• prevent unnecessary lives lost through suicide  

We will deliver this through:

• Gateshead Health and Care System Board  

• Commissioning strategy  

• Housing Strategy 

• Physical Activity strategy  

• Drug and Alcohol strategy (in development) 

• Local VCSE organisations  

• Gateshead Smoke free, Healthy Weight and Alcohol Alliances 

• Integrated Adults and Social Care Strategy 

• Adult Caregivers Strategy 

• Tackling Poverty Together Partnership Strategy and Action Plan 

• Suicide Prevention Partnership (in development) 

• Gateshead NHS Foundation Trust Strategy 

• CNTW Strategy 

• Multi-Agency Safeguarding Arrangements 

• Great North Healthcare Community Promise 

We know we will have made a difference when:

• all preventable ill health in Gateshead is reduced  

• we close the gap in inequalities within the borough  

• all residents will be able to access flexible health and care support, when and where they need it