A new Health and Wellbeing Strategy for Surrey

1. To what extent respondents agreed with priorities set
2. Whether respondents agreed with the population groups identified
3. The level of ambition included within the draft strategy

The engagement period ran from 27 February to 27 March 2019.

During this period, we received 160 responses to the online survey in addition to a number of emails and letters. Whilst this recent engagement exercise was not a formal consultation, it was a chance to test an evidence-based draft strategy. It is important to stress that this is only part of the engagement process as described in the draft Strategy.

We would like to thank everyone who responded and participated in the engagement around the strategy for their views and feedback. More than 80% of respondents ‘tend to agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ with the three strategy priorities and the target groups.

The responses highlighted a number of areas where we could improve the Strategy – these included:

• Making the strategy easier to access and understand.
• Strengthening or adding specific references to specific areas of focus including for example, domestic abuse, addressing environmental factors affecting people’s health and wellbeing, and mental health.
• Making sure some of the language and way we described things was clearer
• Reviewing the metrics in the strategy to ensure they captured the full range of outcomes we were trying to achieve.

Whilst we may not have always been able to fully address every concern, we have listened and will be amending the Surrey Health and Wellbeing Strategy to reflect the feedback from the engagement period.

We have amended the following in the strategy:

• The strategy has been shortened and the language simplified.
• The priorities within the revised strategy have been updated to reflect feedback around strengthening references to mental health, improving environmental factors that impact people’s health and wellbeing, domestic abuse and physical activity.
• We have reviewed wording to ensure it is clear ‘substance misuse’ includes the use of illegal drugs for Priority One, and the description of population groups to focus on people living with illness and/or a disability.

The Health and Wellbeing Board also agreed that further work needed to be undertaken on measuring outcomes for the Strategy and is working with the Executive Director of Public Health to lead this work (through the Surrey Office of Data Analytics).

The new 10 year Surrey Health and Wellbeing Strategy has been published on the Healthy Surrey website and partners are now working together to translate the commitments made in the strategy into implementation plans.

Some of the feedback we received didn’t relate to the strategy document itself – for example feedback included suggestions to support implementation or focussed on issues that sit outside of the Strategy – we’ve shared that feedback with relevant leads / partners to help shape and improve services.  You can see a more detailed summary of the feedback and our response here.