Agenda item

To hear from Thomas Barker, the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust Head of Community Response.

Suggested time 1hour

The Committee heard from Thomas Barker, Head of Collaborative Response, East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust that the Trust was innovating with its partners to do the right things for its patients. An example of this was a Community Wellbeing pilot in Bedfordshire, Essex and Cambridgeshire that tackled response, prevention and protection to create additional capacity to achieve Category 1 life threatening incidents being responded to on average within 8 minutes.

Mr Barker added that a collaboration with Norfolk Fire and Rescue service had seen six fire stations, with an additional three in the pipeline, that are able to provide emergency medical response to patients that suffer cardiac arrest. It has seen in quarter one 55 calls responded to with the Fire and Rescue Service arriving ahead of the Ambulance on 68% of those calls with an average of an 8-minute earlier arrival time.

Mr Barker stated that there were currently 220 Community First Responders in Norfolk and last month provided 4,000 hours of voluntary support to the Ambulance service. The Trust was advertising for additional volunteers in those areas where they were needed.

Mr Barker commented that the Trust’s approach was to increase its capacity through these different approaches to seek to reduce the response times for category 1 incidents as well increasing recruitment in full time staff. In this financial year it was seeking to recruit an additional 152 staff in Norfolk and Waveney.

Mr Barker advised that this regional collaboration work had been recognised by the Home Office as good practise.

Councillor Vickers, along with other committee members, thanked the Ambulance Service and the Fire and Rescue Service for the work that they do and asked if there were plans to expand these schemes for other category 1 incidents and whether there was funding to continue the work beyond the pilot.

Mr Barker stated that the ambition was to expand to a dual crewing model to enable a more innovative way of delivering the service into target areas where response times were historically longer.

Councillor Hankins asked how closely the Ambulance Trust worked with primary care especially when dealing with emergency calls.

Mr Barker advised that as part of Trust’s new Clinical strategy it had created six new unscheduled care coordination hubs that were multi-disciplinary teams including primary care so that 999 calls that were not an emergency could be passed via a portal to other care providers to pick up those calls and provide swift replies. The Trust was looking at adding other providers into the hub including palliative care services.

Councillor Cushing asked whether there were gaps in North Norfolk with no Community First Responders (CFR) and what help could be given to local communities to help get funding for training and equipment for the responders.

Mr Barker stated that the Trust had recently completed a mapping exercise of CFRs across the region and that could be shared with the council to assess where some more local support would help. In terms of funding the Ambulance Trust funds the initial equipment and training. There has been grants from the Trust’s charity to Parish and County Councils to help with further costs.

Mr Barker added that the role of CFRs was not yet particularly well understood by the public and the Trust was running engagement campaigns to raise the profile of CFRs. Over the last 12 months there has been a drive to pay CFRs expenses for responding to 999 calls.

Councillor Dixon commented that local Councillors attended Parish and Town Councils and could pass on that information about the role of CFRs.

Councillor Penfold asked what information would be available to Councillors to enable them to do this.

Mr Barker advised that he would be happy to meet Councillors to explain what the role was and could arrange some direct engagement sessions with CFRs. There was a local management team who could link in with Councillors and there was a range of different communication materials that could be shared.

Councillor Boyle asked about delays at the hospitals and where there was anything additional that could be tried to improve those waiting times.

Mr Barker stated that there was work ongoing with other care providers to explore all other possible options that could be taken to ensure that the right patients were being taken to hospital at the right time. The service was seeking to improve its performance at both the front and back end.

Councillor Dixon asked about the golden hour and with the benefits early intervention had on patients’ recovery, the use of all the Fire and Rescue Service stations and whether CFRs could be a considerable resource for early intervention.

Scott Norman, Deputy Chief Fire Officer, Norfolk Fire and Rescue Service, explained that the falls service was being explored as something that could offer some real value to help people who have fallen to prevent them going into a state that needs more emergency care. In North Norfolk, the co-responding service was provided from the stations that covered the areas around North Walsham, Cromer, Sheringham, Hunstanton, Heacham, and Dereham, with Aylsham, Mundesley and Sandringham about to be used. If any Councillor wanted to visit any of these stations to let him know.

Councillors Shires had visited the North Walsham station who had been very positive about this work and asked how the teams had responded to co-responding and with changes to a number of systems whether there was an opportunity to educate the public as to whose does what.

Mr Norman stated that the service had undertaken a large trial on emergency medical response in 2017/18 to measure the health and wellbeing impact on the crews and the service had introduced a support package to support the new co responding service.

Mr Norman added that the service was designing its community risk plan to provide a risk assessment of the service for the next 3 years, but more work was needed to be done to better communicate the work that is being done and a new communications team had been established.

Mr Barker commented that EEAST were planning on attending public events over the next year and would promote East Heart a community awareness campaign along with training sessions for life support.

Councillor Fredericks advised that there was an open day coming up at the Mundesley station and asked whether it would be possible to undertake some shared communications.

Mr Norman stated that it would be an opportunity to get some good engagement with the public and to get a more collaborative approach through the use of CFRs.

Councillor Withington commented about working together on a prevent agenda and as Chair of the North Norfolk Health and Wellbeing Partnership invited both organisations to come to the partnership to share the good work that is being done and to link up with members of the partnership.

Mr Barker stated that he would be happy to do that to work on developing a forward-facing strategy to increase visibility and ensure joined up messages.

Recommended that the Council –

(A) Request the East of England Ambulance Trust to provide

(1) the mapping of CFRs in North Norfolk to establish where any gaps in the numbers of volunteers are

(2) communication materials for members of the council to use when talking to their respective Parish and Town Councils about the co-responding and the role of CFRs

(B) the Council

(1) works with the Norfolk Ambulance Trust to help promote its Campaign on Community First Responders and co responding by signposting members of the public towards the Ambulance Trust’s Community First Responders https://www.eastamb.nhs.uk/join-the-team/volunteering-and-volunteers/community-first-responders

(2) encourages the members of the council to talk to their respective Parish and Town Councils on the importance of the work being done by Community First Responders with the aim of increasing the understanding of these roles and seeking to achieve more volunteers to apply for these roles.