Issue - meetings
Supporting mental health initiatives
Meeting: 04/02/2026 - Overview and Scrutiny Committee (Item 92)
92 Supporting mental health initiatives 
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Purpose
To update on activities undertaken by the Council to promote good mental health.
Recommendation
That the Scrutiny committee resolves to:
1. Note the report.
Additional documents:
Minutes:
Councillor Rachel Crouch, Executive Member for Stronger, Healthy Communities, presented the item the purpose of which was to update on activities undertaken by the Council to promote good mental health.
In her presentation Councillor Crouch made the following points:
- Section two of the report had set out the current data across Oxfordshire that related to mental health.
- The actions that had been undertaken by the Council to promote better mental health were shown in section four of the report. Councillor Crouch gave examples that included: the Mental Health Summit; training for Councillors; West Oxfordshire Youth Partnership meetings; research in Central Witney Ward; funding for APCAM and others; Westhive projects; YouMove; Low Income Family Tracker and a Volunteers’ Fair.
- Councillor Crouch reiterated the support that was available for Councillors and highlighted the upcoming sessions on the mental health Training delivered by MIND.
In the discussion the following points were raised:
- New housing developments needed to include a specific mental health scheme to tackle the potential for disconnected communities. Developments should also be planned to avoid such disconnection through segmenting different residents. The risk of disconnect was even greater given the scale of the proposed developments in the district. There was a suggestion that such schemes could be included in the emerging Local Plan. Members also commented that it was essential for large developments to include a community hub to help tackle disconnected and socially isolated residents. The example of Shilton Park was given. A member noted that a motivated and dynamic person was often essential to ensure such hubs were successful.
- Suggestions for further action in the area of mental health were raised such as: Officers visiting and collaborating with schools and parents; additional resources for GLL to provide more activities; promotion of schemes and improvement of Council communications; targeting late teens to improve access to fitness resources. The officers noted that they were working with GLL to increase capacity for activities and S106 monies were available for this. The Chair commented that the current communication methods may have missed older children who preferred other media to gather information.
- The Executive Member advised that the key resources that had been identified as needed for organisations working in mental health were spaces to operate and transport. Further resource and work had been done in this area and spaces for services to operate in Witney had been identified. At present ten thousand pounds had been allocated for this work.
- A Member queried if the research that had been undertaken in the Central Witney Ward could be expanded to other areas of the district. Officers advised that this research had been targeted at this ward on the basis of identified health inequality. Further work of this type would require additional financial and officer resource.
- The Committee explored the possibility of the Council encouraging employers to use their apprenticeship levy to develop mental health roles, rather than the current predominant focus on operational roles. This was noted to be an underexplored area which officers would ... view the full minutes text for item 92