Rachel Silcock (Strategic Commissioning Manager, Plymouth City Council) and Matt Bell provide an update to the Board.  It was reported that following a successful bid to the Lottery Fund and the Kings Fund to help strengthen our partnership with health partners and the voluntary and community sector to improve health outcomes.  Loneliness and self-isolation had a major impact on people during the pandemic.  The Local Care Partnership would be overseeing this project co-designing solutions with our communities.  They would be recruiting Plymouth residents to be trained to have community conversations and to get residents to speak to other residents and to build up to a strategic level.  To harness that intelligence to make strategic decisions and to keep a focus on decision making and action.  The voice from the people in strategic decision making.

It was agreed that the Board:

1.         Publicly recognise the co-design process (and similar work happening elsewhere) as a vital stage in developing services in Plymouth. This will achieve two significant benefits:

·         Show shared commitment to work together across the health and care system.

·         Give added credibility to the process and help to recruit community researchers.

2.    Formally support the Social Isolation Conference on the 6 October 2021 as a significant and complementary piece of work.