There was a change of membership for this meeting; Councillor Dychton replaced Councillor Cavinder and Councillor Mauthoor replaced Councillor Mills.

Apologies were received from Councillor Dhindsa.

There were no disclosures of interest.

The minutes of the meeting held on 04 September 2017 to be submitted and signed.

The minutes of the meeting held on 4 September 2017 were submitted and signed.

Angela Edmonds, Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust, and Peter Belfield, New Hope Trust, to discuss the experiences of service providers and of those receiving services.

Links to the two organisations websites are as follow: 

http://www.hpft.nhs.uk/services/find-our-services/hertfordshire/watford/

https://www.newhope.org.uk/

The Chair introduced the speakers and invited them to talk about their work.

Mr Belfield, New Hope, explained that they worked with up to 600 vulnerable individuals providing homelessness support.  A large amount of New Hope’s service users had drug and alcohol problems as well as mental health issues. 

Feedback from New Hope staff regarding mental health services from colleagues, including the Assistant Manager of the Rough Sleeper Intervention Service and a mental health worker from Herts Young Homeless (HYH), was that there was a generally good experience of working with the mental health team.  Once an individual was under the care of the team then they had a good and positive experience.  There were challenges around making contact with individual within the mental health team and a list of key people would be helpful in order to gain a better understanding of the mental health service.  With regards to experience of the Community Mental Health Team (CMHT) there were difficulties in getting an appointment as waiting lists were long and the care co-ordinator had too many cases. There was work done at New Hope with an individual regarding drug and alcohol misuse.  However, the challenge was to get to a point where the individual was managing their substance misuse and then for the mental health services to be involved but there could be a lag time during which the individual was likely to relapse.

Mr Belfield discussed the New Hope annual review for 2016/17.  The review showed that 52% of service users had mental health issues.  However, not all these would need access to mental health services and it was one of the challenges to understand where the thresholds were in terms of referring to the mental health team.  There was a broad spectrum of mental health.

In response to a question from the chair Mr Belfield described how at New Hope the services worked from those who were rough sleepers or were about to be made homeless, then they would have emergency shelter where their risks and needs were assessed and they were assigned a support worker. Then they may be moved into temporary accommodation and according to their needs then moved into long term accommodation.  Housing was the core business of New Hope but it was found that as the charity improved the skill set of workers and the quality of service provided there was a need to better integrate their services with clinical services.  New Hope had brought together staff from Change Grow Live (CGL), Citizens Advice Bureau and HYH who were all working together and funded by New Hope.  The impact of this partnership working had been dramatic. 

In response to the task group’s questions on partnership working compared with other locations nationally, Mr Belfield explained that the closest place taking a similar approach was Manchester where the Combined Authority Mayor, Andy Burnham, was focusing on housing.  There had recently been a successful bid in Watford for Department for  ...  view the full minutes text for item 15.

The Community Safety Coordinator to provide the task group with an update on progress with the Protecting Communities and Managing Crime Plan.

The Community Safety Coordinator delivered the presentation to the task group. 

Gangs and serious offences

Vulnerable areas had been identified and arrests had been made.

Night time economy

There was lower scale violent crime with links to domestic abuse.  Marshals at the taxi ranks were in place to get people home quickly.

Race hate

There was no particular targeted group rather it was as a result of individuals having verbal disagreements which included race hate words.  Alternatively a victim could feel that behaviour against them was because of their background. 

Prevent training

The Chair requested that all members of the task group needed to encourage their groups to attend prevent training and praised the training session which had been held at the Town Hall recently.

Child exploitation

The task group requested more information in this area.  There was a plan in place by the police and work was ongoing.

Homelessness and rough sleeping

All the individuals who were street drinkers or rough sleepers were known and four people who had refused to engage with any support services had been prosecuted. 

The task group praised the work of the Community Safety Coordinator and New Hope.

RESOLVED –

that the presentation be noted.