Issue - meetings

7.1       The Board considered a report on the Better Care Fund (BCF) plans for 2024/25. Mark Stainton introduced the report which sets out the plans for year 2 of the BCF funding. The grant conditions remain unaltered and there have been a few minor changes to the funding which are set out in the report and in more detail in Appendix 1 of the report which contains the financial template. Appendix 2 contains the BCF narrative report which covers the two-year period of the funding. The Board is asked to approve the BCF plans for 2024/25.

7.2       The Chair commented that the report provided evidence that longer-term funding works and that future longer-term funding from Government would be welcomed as this aids the surety and planning of services.

7.3       Ashley Scarff, Director of Joint Commissioning and ICT Development (East Sussex), NHS Sussex commented that the BCF template in Appendix 1 is an NHS England format which works well electronically but some sections can appear small in the printed format. He outlined that the work around demand and capacity planning continues throughout the year to aid modelling and ensure the Plan remains robust. The Discharge Fund element of the Plan will continue to evolve throughout the year, particularly the development of schemes for the winter period.

7.4       Stephen Lightfoot commented that he would like to put on record that NHS Sussex is grateful for the way East Sussex County Council (ESCC) colleagues have collaborated on the BCF. He stated that there are a really good set of initiatives in the Plan and agreed that longer-term funding enables better outcomes to be achieved. He outlined that the NHS Sussex contribution to the BCF is £57.5 million which has been increased by 6% compared with an overall increase of NHS budgets of 1%. This represents an investment in this activity and ensuring that the expenditure has an impact is important. Section 3.8 of the report sets out the four key measures that are mandated to monitor the delivery of the Plan, but it will also be important to look at more local measures, such as those around high intensity services users, carer support and urgent community care response.

7.5       Stephen Lightfoot added that in terms of impact, discharge is an important part of the activity delivered by the BCF funding. For example, in East Sussex Healthcare Trust (ESHT) hospitals the number medically fit to discharge patients as of 30 June 2022 was 115. This rose to 177 as of 30 June 2023 and then to 232 as of 30 June 2024, which represents a 29% increase and reduces the number of beds available. It will be important to use some of the BCF funding investment to reduce the number of patients ready and waiting for discharge from hospital. Going forward it will be important for the partners to achieve as much impact as possible from the BCF funding.

7.6       Mark Stainton agreed with the point made around measures and that it will be  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7