While praising the Government's 10-Year Health Plan focus on prevention and the shift to analogue, Cllr Taylor said she had a ‘big concern' about its neighbourhood health proposals.

‘What we don't want to see is a lot of shiny new buildings,' she said. ‘What we actually want to see is proper integration of the people who work in health and wellbeing to make sure that we actually can find somewhere that people can come for support, whatever they need. Local government has to be at the centre of this.

‘What we don't want is the Government to say, "Oh, well, we've done these pilots. This is the model we think is best and just drop it in". It has to be arranged locally.'

With the Government having set out its plans to have 120 of 250 neighbourhood health centres operational by 2030, Taylor said this had been done to suit the needs of local people.

‘We need to have proper centres in the places where they're needed,' she stressed.

She gave the example of the failure to fulfil the promise of a health centre for a large housing estate with 9,000 residents in her native Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

‘It's that sort of thing that makes the neighbourhood health model actually more difficult to achieve if we don't have the resources in the right areas to do that,' Cllr Taylor said.

The health and wellbeing chair said local government should be given a say in the location of neighbourhood health centres, adding she hoped the majority would make use of existing buildings.

‘The last thing we want to see is a lot of money spent on new buildings, rather than actual services, so we can utilise buildings that are already there,' she stressed.

Cllr Taylor said community centres were often underused and could provide neighbourhood health services.

‘Fine, if there are no buildings there, then they've got to be in the right places,' she observed. ‘And I would hope that we would have a strong say in where those are going to be.'

The councillor said neighbourhood health had to be led more by local government than the NHS, commenting: ‘We don't want a clinical model of neighbourhood health. We want a health and wellbeing model where we're actually looking mainly at prevention and then trying to reduce the number of people going into hospital, having a better system for people who need to come out of hospital to get the care they need in the community.

‘I think we should be the ones bringing everybody together. We've already got a good record on doing that. We work very well with the NHS, for example, we need to work better with the voluntary sector and other organisations to make sure that we can bring everything together. But I think local government is very well placed to do that.

‘If you're going to move from hospital to community, then local government has to be at the centre of that, and we need to make sure that the services are properly integrated, that everybody works properly together.'

Cllr Taylor cited evidence that many GPs rarely see their health visitors was an example of how multi-disciplinary teams currently fail to work together.

‘We have to have everybody working together and hopefully somewhere where a resident could drop in and say, "This is my problem," and they would be then directed to the right person to sort that out, whether it's housing, health, benefits, employment, whatever it is there should be somebody there to be able to help them,' the councillor argued.

Social determinants

The LGA chair said the great strength of public health was its focus on the social determinants of health such as housing, education, the local environment and air quality.

She said the principles of Marmot Places that address health inequalities through social determinants could provide a framework for neighbourhood health.

With 4.5m children living in poverty, and about one million more or less destitute, Cllr Taylor stressed the importance of focusing on early years and young people's health.

‘I think we do need to concentrate on children's health and reducing child poverty if we're going to see the benefits of improved health,' she said.

‘It's absolutely critical that we tackle child poverty and improve child health, child dental care and child obesity. Those are the issues that we have to tackle now. We have to make sure that our parks and play areas are part of the public health system to get children out and about and playing together and socialising. It's all those aspects of childhood that are so important for future health.

‘The gap between the life expectancy of the most deprived compared to the least deprived is a scandal. It needs to be tackled,' she added, identifying family hubs as a very effective platform to start from.

Funding

When addressing how healthcare could be better funded through the NHS and local government, Cllr Taylor welcomed the three-year settlement for the Public Health Grant but said the amount provided was nowhere the level of 10 years ago in real terms.

‘If we don't keep up with inflation and increased demand, then obviously local councils will find it very difficult to provide the services that are needed,' she warned.

Cllr Taylor also welcomed the recent announcement that most of the SEND deficit would be paid for by Government as well as its £4bn support package, including the commitment that every child will be given support in a mainstream setting.

She added: ‘For improved mainstream inclusion to be successful, all settings need to be empowered and resourced to meet the needs of children and young people with SEND, with a workforce that has the capacity and right skills.

‘Councils have a key role to play and will need powers to lead local SEND systems and to hold health and education partners to account, to make sure they are meeting children's needs.'

Cllr Taylor added the Government's commitment to write-off 90% of historic SEND deficits had removed the immediate threat of insolvency for many councils.

Social care

When asked how she would like to see healthcare stakeholders working better together, Cllr Taylor said social care and health should ideally be totally integrated but failing this they should work as strong partnerships, willing to listen to each other and share data.

‘Data sharing is particularly important if everyone's going to do the work that's needed and not duplicate or leave gaps in the system,' she stressed.

Addressing how social care can be better integrated into neighbourhood health, Cllr Taylor expressed her hopes the Casey Commission will come up with some genuine proposals long before its current 2028 timetable.

‘We need to see urgent progress,' she emphasised.

The councillor also argued it was crucial that local government was on the negotiating board for the Fair Pay Agreement.

‘Excluding local government is madness, because we obviously commission a lot of the social care,' she illustrated.

‘We need to be at the centre of that agreement. But what we want to see is staff properly rewarded, a proper pay and career structure and parity with NHS staff, so that it really is a career that people can take on and enjoy and get a lot of satisfaction from that type of work if you're properly rewarded for it.'

The LGA is hosting a series of events to bring partners together to discuss the best way forward for social care. You can sign up to attend the Care where we live events here.