‘Cut out the jargon’ call over Calderdale community health report

Health representatives were presenting a report to Calderdale Council’s Adults, Health and Social Care Scrutiny Board outlining key goals providing people’s care close to home should deliver.

But councillors also wanted more information about the practical steps being taken to achieve this.

One of Calderdale’s GPs, Dr Nigel Taylor, said community services would be key to delivering care through the Calderdale Cares partnership, and Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group had developed a “Care Closer To Home” prospectus.

The aim is to keep people well, and to manage acute illnesses and conditions, in their own homes.

Key elements included managing people’s health in a proactive and preventative ways, issues ranging from diabetes and weight to mental health, said Dr Taylor.

Calderdale’s Director of Public Health, Deborah Harkins, said Calderdale Cares’ intention was to support people to stay independent and well in their local community, accessing services as close to home as possible.

As well as helping encouraging people to boost their own health and well being, for example by being active, and addressing the root causes of poor health, when people needed care there should be a co-ordinated approach.

This included people only having to tell their story once, rather than multiple times to different agencies as so often in the past, with a named contact to enable them to do this, said Ms Harkins.

Councillors heard the resulting Care Closer To Home Programme had also been renamed Calderdale Collaborative Community Partnership Board – and this triggered their complaints about the way the report was written.

Scrutiny Board Chair Coun Howard Blagbrough (Con, Brighouse) said he hoped they would change that title to something simpler which could be understood by the public.

Coun Mike Barnes (Lab, Skircoat) agreed and wanted the report itself to be clearer too.

“The report is as bad as the name, it’s too full of jargon,” he said, querying what a phrase like “place-based digital maturity” meant.

“It fails the person-in-the-street test. We sit on committees and even we don’t understand it.

“We need these reports to be a lot more simple, a lot more readable,” said Coun Barnes.

Dr Taylor said he would take the comments on the chin.

Coun Colin Hutchinson (Lab, Skircoat), wanted to know more about practical steps which would be taken to achieve its aims.

“We know care is delivered by people, not by flow charts…can we see some of the meat on the bones, rather than the aspirations?” he said.