A FOUR-YEAR plan which aims to prioritise health and wellbeing improvements and reduce inequalities in the borough has been approved by St Helens Borough Council’s cabinet.

The St Helens People’s Plan 2024-27 sets out the strategic priorities for the award-winning St Helens Cares model - launched in 2018 to address the rising cost and demand in health and social care.

Health and care objectives

It consists of four key partnership priorities as well as wider health and care objectives:

• Start well - children and young people; early help; best start in life; Family Hubs; maternity

• Live well - long-term conditions; planned care; cancer; long-term conditions; women’s wellbeing

• Age well - community services, dementia; urgent and emergency care; social care

• Partner priorities (all ages) - mental wellbeing; healthy weight; care communities; inequalities.

The council adds that by 2027, the St Helens People’s Plan aims to achieve a number of key outcomes including reducing rates of emergency admissions for intentional self-harm, suicide, social isolation, childhood obesity.

There is also the ambition to increase the number of active adults and raising aspirations of children and young people to tackle inequalities.

'Improving health and reducing inequalities'

In a statement, Councillor Andy Bowden, St Helens Borough Council’s Cabinet Member for Integrated Health and Social Care, said: “The People’s Plan 2024-27 has been developed in collaboration with partners and can be seen as a continuation of our integration journey.

"Our ‘One Place, One System, One Ambition’ vision to improve people’s lives in St Helens remains the same, our four priorities are consistent - however we have widened the scope by including objectives that span the life-course of people, making a more comprehensive plan that provides better alignment with council priorities and the objectives of NHS Cheshire and Merseyside, with the aim of improving the health of the whole population and reducing inequalities."

St Helens Cares came out top in the Care and Health Integration category at the Municipal Journal (MJ) Achievement Awards 2018, the year of its establishment.

An integrated approach to support people to live well, it places a focus on preventing the need for health and social care by supporting people to remain independent for as long as possible.

To read the St Helens People’s Plan 2024-27 in full, visit: https://sthelens.moderngov.co.uk/documents/s158070/Appendix%201.pdf