South West London CCG Annual Report and Accounts 2020/21

Covid-19 vaccination in late 2020 and early 2021. Supporting Croydon’s voluntary groups to help reduce health inequalities In January 2021, the One Croydon alliance was chosen as one of just six health partnerships in England to benefit from a multi-million-pound cash injection as part of The Healthy Communities Together programme, established by The King’s Fund and The National Lottery Community Fund. The funding will support partnership-working between the voluntary and community sector (VCS), the NHS and local authorities, and will help them make the most of their combined capability to improve the health of their communities. One Croydon was selected from more than 270 applicants after demonstrating how it aims to tackle deep-rooted health inequalities and improve the links between health and care services and the communities they serve so that local needs can be better met. The Covid-19 pandemic has rightly drawn attention to the health inequalities facing many of our residents and there’s never been a more important time to continue work to tackle these issues. Our vision is to transform how we deliver care, and our One Croydon alliance has been working hard to do this since 2017, empowering local people and communities and bringing together health and care to create cohesive services, and we know we need to do more to help reduce local health inequalities. The voluntary and community sector in Croydon is incredibly strong and well placed to help people improve their wellbeing. We’ve have seen this in action in the collective local response to the pandemic and now we want to build on and develop an even better quality of partnership for our borough. Trailblazer: Improving emotional support in schools - special educational needs school cluster engagement in Merton and Sutton The Trailblazer programme was created in response to a high number of children who were found to be self-harming across South West London. Its objective is to reduce the number of children self-harming in South West London through a ‘whole system’, multi-agency approach, using health, education, and local authority resources to provide support in schools to parents, carers, and children and young people at an early stage. NHS Merton is working closely with NHS Sutton and the special educational needs (SEN) cluster, focusing on SEN schools in both boroughs. The cluster is auditing practices to assess the current provision and where improvements can be made. Audits will feed into the wider cluster action plan. Engagement with children and young people will help inform the whole system approach. Support on the project has an emphasis on providing resources and materials to the schools, to help support the teachers to deliver the engagement sessions. Annual Report and Accounts 2020/21 | 77