Background and Context
By Cllr Susan Masters – Scrutiny Commission Chair
Historically there had been a gulf between the way Newham’s residents experience health and social care services – as issues round access to services (GPs, Dentists, CAMHS services) – and the strategic role occupied by Health and Adult Social Care Scrutiny.
Presentations from services were often received without any adaptation for committee members who might have had an interest in health services but little understanding of running a service or NHS/Adult Social Care jargon.
As a consequence, meetings could be a dry experience with few members feeling they had the necessary knowledge to be able to participate. There was also little interest from residents outside of local campaign groups and health and care professionals as the only way they had of participating was spectating at meetings in Newham’s Town Hall.
A further serious concern was that despite the diversity of Councillors elected to serve the London Borough of Newham, this was seldom reflected in the choices of witnesses or the sessions of evidence-gathering they participated in.
Challenges and Opportunities
The challenge I faced as an in-coming Chair was to ensure the resident voice and experience was captured within meetings but equally that meetings reflected our community and engaged the members of the committee, bringing the issues under scrutiny to life.
Initiatives and Actions Taken
An effort was made to find witnesses from global majority-led organisations or communities with a connection to the issue under scrutiny. Examples included inviting the Caribbean and African Health Network and Support When It Matters (SWIM – a Hackney-based group specialising in mental health support to the African and Caribbean Heritage organisation) to our session looking at inequalities in Mental Health experiences. Also, when we looked at the new police ‘Right Care, Right Person’ police strategy changes regarding mental health, we invited Antonio Ferreira from the campaign ‘Hear Me Speak’, to give evidence. Antonio works with the police to improve responses to people in mental health crisis following his own poor experiences.
Other initiatives and actions included:
- Workplan-setting Stakeholder chats widened from anchor partners (Council Service Directors, Cabinet Leaders, Leaders of our ICS at Place and Local Acute Services) to include VCFS leads, Healthwatch and – where relevant- campaign organisations. Posts on social media invited resident opinion.
- The end of one-hour, pre-meeting, planning sessions, held immediately before a meeting that were largely ineffectual as committee members arrived at different times on the night, owing to differing work and family commitments. Instead, one-hour, virtual, mid-evening preparation meetings were arranged on a different day to walk members through the papers and allow for any questions to asked in a safe space.
- One positive result of the pandemic was that meetings are now streamed live, online and available afterwards for viewing so nobody now needs to attend the town hall at a specific time and place to follow a discussion.
- Key questions are now brought to meetings and shared out, so members lacking in confidence can still participate.
- Where salient questions are communicated to the Chair over social media while a meeting is in progress, they can now be posed.
- A shift in focus of meetings was made from lengthy presentations from Anchor Partners (now taken as a given when supplied in advance) to brief explanations of any parts that had proven confusing to the committee and a few key points to questions from members
- Work undertaken with Newham’s Communications Team to tweet out agenda items and improve the presentation of reports.
Impact and learning
Outcomes and Impact
The outcomes are the committee being more engaged and confident, the VCS being more aware of what we do and the committee being more agile. Although scrutiny is not a forum for casework, having individuals speak of their own personal experiences, brought issues to life for all of us on the commission, helping us all understand the consequences of strategy changes.
Lessons Learned
That scrutiny is an odd forum, and you cannot assume people understand its way of working. That it is important to know in advance the content of what a witness is going to present and to share this with partners so they can be enabled to respond at time, rather than being justified in asking to supply responses outside of the meeting.
Future Directions
- Having officers create a database of local contacts for different communities.
- Looking at the location of and structure of meetings with a view to continuing to break down barriers and raise the profile of scrutiny.
Cllr Susan Masters – Scrutiny Commission Chair
Susan’s Suggestions for Sensational Scrutiny
- As Chair, when it comes to selecting witnesses, take responsibility for ensuring your committee is proactive in searching out new voices that reflect your wider community and can talk about their lived experiences of the issue in question to bring it to life.
- Make sure that – even if they can’t attend all your meetings – you meet and are accessible to a wide range of stakeholders, including campaigners and the voluntary sector (where relevant). Be visible locally
- Promote your committee’s activities on social media.
- Build your relationship with your lead member and try and ensure scrutiny is an early point of call for the administration when issues are emerging – be a critical friend but a trustworthy one.
- Ensure you build your relationship with your committee members – have a WhatsApp and consider a social or two to build relationships so they know they can reach out if they have questions
- Listen to a news programme at the top of the day and monitor local news bulletins for items that relate to your scrutiny function
- Ensure your officer researches best practise in other local authorities and keeps you posted on any relevant stories in key publications.
- Even if you have to set a workplan early in the scrutiny year, maintain your agility by keeping the first half hour as an open forum where stakeholders or committee members can raise related questions on emerging issues
All case studies