One of the areas of Public Health work I am particularly proud of, and which lies within my portfolio, is an initiative called Local Area Partnerships (LAPs). These began operating about two years ago and are a collaborative project designed to improve the health and wellbeing of our communities by looking to deal directly with many health inequalities facing our residents in both rural and urban areas of our district.
Nine LAP areas have been created across West Northamptonshire, covering between 30,000 and 50,000 residents. They are designed to provide support for the local population to “live their best life,” no matter their age, by working to ensure that health and care services are better coordinated and focused on the unique needs of each area. This new approach was designed to help provide tailored and targeted support to each community to improve health and care outcomes that will hopefully make a difference in everyday lives.
I am really proud of my team and their common-sense, data-driven approach to projects that have been undertaken to understand the characteristics and variables of each community. The LAPs bring many different agencies together—from Public Health, Adult Social Care, Children’s Social Care, and Police, to partnerships that include the local voluntary sector, GPs, Parish Councils, and residents. Each area decided upon three main priority areas of work. The priorities align with the wider integrated health system's Ten Ambitions.
Some of the projects that we have looked at include:
- A study into school exclusions, where it was highlighted that 12.5 years of education is being lost each year in Central Northampton alone. This is huge, as is the potential impact on the children who are being excluded from school. Understanding the issues behind this figure has been pieced together, and several projects have been launched to try and tackle the issues causing exclusions, such as vaping, behaviour, and understanding the socioeconomic and community factors that may affect children. Progress has been made, and we are beginning to see early signs of success.
- A study into Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), a respiratory disease, where the number of admissions to A&E across LAP areas was higher than the national average. Work to understand reasons and causes, and how it differed by area and what we can do to combat or ease this medical issue was carried out. This predominantly involved work to reach out to communities within the LAP area to promote and highlight simple ways to improve health outcomes.Other projects include work to reduce rural isolation and to improve support for people who suffer from dementia in some of our more sparsely populated areas.
- Another successful project that I have to mention is our warm spaces programme, now called Welcoming Spaces, which originally began as a cost-of-living initiative. We now have 112 across the county—places where people can come and warm up, get a nice hot cuppa, have a friendly chat with others, and receive advice on accessing local support services if they need them. As of December 2024, 178,000 people had attended a Welcoming Space. I suspect when I receive the next data, this number will have increased further due to the withdrawal of the Winter Fuel Payments. This project has been nominated for a national award.
Thinking to the future regarding our LAPs, I feel strongly that we still have so much more to accomplish, and the opportunity is huge. Social care teams are now oriented around the LAP geography, and the Police have changed their beat patterns to fit the geography too.
We are looking to open new Family Hubs in each LAP, with spokes running out across each area as well. Future work will focus on the key priorities of the Council, such as becoming much more preventative in the children’s and adult social care space and there are further opportunities to integrate with health following their push to locate more services in our local communities, as per the current consultation on the emerging NHS 10-year plan.
I opened by exclaiming that I am very proud of what we have achieved so far, but this work, to continually understand the communities and improve the outcomes of the residents of West Northamptonshire will never stop.
Written by Cllr Matt Golby, Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care, Public Health & Regulatory Services, West Northamptonshire Council