Healthwatch Herefordshire Annual Report 2016/17
Healthwatch Herefordshire 2
Contents
Message from our Chair ................................................................................... 3
Highlights from our year .................................................................................. 4
Who we are .................................................................................................. 5
Your views on health and care .......................................................................... 7
Helping you find the answers ............................................................................ 9
Making a difference together ........................................................................... 11
Working with communities across the county ....................................................... 13
Our plans for next year .................................................................................. 15
Our finances ................................................................................................ 17
Contact us .................................................................................................. 19
Healthwatch Herefordshire 3
Message from our Chair
Ian Stead - Board Member 2013 - 2017
Chair from April 2017.
As the recently appointed chairman of
Healthwatch Herefordshire, I am delighted
to introduce our fourth annual report. Most
importantly I would like to thank the
previous chairman, Paul Deneen, whose hard
work and commitment ensured four very
successful years of Healthwatch activity. I
would also like to thank the retiring board
members: Sheila Marsh, Sheila Archer, Allan
Lloyd, Colin Javens and Gwyneth Gill, for
their dedicated contributions as well as
Debra Tritton who has continued her
contribution to the newly structured
Healthwatch. The support and leadership of
Jacqui Bremner was invaluable as was the
professional work of the staff: Christine
Price, Richard Dudley and Mary Simpson.
Our team of volunteers have provided
Healthwatch with valuable enthusiastic
contributions and we look forward to
developing their role further in the future.
Over the course of the 2016/2017
operational year Healthwatch Herefordshire
continued to be the independent voice of
the public by influencing the planning and
monitoring the delivery of health and social
care services in the county. The following
report indicates the broad range of
activities that Healthwatch Herefordshire
undertook over the last year.
The new model for Healthwatch
Herefordshire, is as a company limited by
guarantee. This will be membership and
stakeholder based in order to ensure that
policy decisions and work programme
priorities are developed as the result of
close consultation with interested
individuals and relevant organisations and
across geographical locations throughout the
county.
I very much look forward to working with
the Directors: Debra Tritton, Gareth
Blackett and the staff and welcome the
business setup support from Simon Adams
from Healthwatch Worcestershire. The new
organisation will enthusiastically continue
with, and develop further, the work of
Healthwatch Herefordshire in the
forthcoming year.
Ian Stead – Chair
Healthwatch Herefordshire 4
Highlights from our year
This year we’ve reached 70,000 people through digital media
Our volunteers help us with everything from Enter & View to public events and have contributed over 500 hours
We’ve visited 8 local services for Enter & View
Our reports have tackled issues ranging from Autism, young people’s mental health, to Accessing GP’s
We’ve spoken to 1350 people on Plans to Transform the NHS.
We’ve met hundreds of local people at our community events
Healthwatch Herefordshire 5
Who we are We know that you want services that work
for you, your friends and family. That’s why
we want you to share your experiences of
using health and care services with us –
both good and bad. We use your voice to
encourage those who run services to act on
what matters to you.
We are uniquely placed as a national
network, with a local Healthwatch in every
local authority area in England.
Our vision
To listen to your views about health
and social care services in
Herefordshire.
Make your views heard to those who
plan services.
Provide information about how you
can access health and social care
services.
Champion fairness, equal access and
equal treatment.
Speak up on your behalf.
Play an important role at both local
and national level and make sure
that the views of the public and
people who use services are taken
into account.
To pass on information, make
recommendations and report
concerns about the quality of Health
and Social Care to Herefordshire
Council's Health and Social Care
Overview and Scrutiny Committee,
and to Healthwatch England, which
can also recommend that the Care
Quality Commission takes action.
Our priorities
Maintain and build strong
partnerships with key stakeholders,
challenging commissioners about
service users being at the heart of
commissioning, and challenging
service providers on improving
quality with feedback gathered from
service users.
Target the collection of experiences
from people using mental health
services.
Target the collection of experience
from children and young people in
health and care services.
Target seldom heard and hard-to-
reach groups for their experiences of
services.
Investigate access to health services.
Healthwatch Herefordshire 6
Our Team
Jacqui Bremner – Operational Lead
Richard Dudley – Communications
Officer
Mary Simpson – Engagement &
Volunteer Co-ordinator
Christine Price – Information & Advice
Officer
Hvoss – contract holder and finance
Our Volunteers
We value the time and important
contribution that volunteers make to
Healthwatch, taking their time to
participate in Enter & View, Patient Led
Assessments of the Care Environment
(PLACE) with the NHS Trusts, feeding back
and shaping our work, publicity events,
engagement with the public and
administrative tasks. Thank you to:
June Emberton
Joyce Thomas MBE
Paul Picken
David Faulkner
Jonathan Smith
Marcus Allen
Brenda Bayliss
Paul Prouse
Margot Forde
Emily Warmington
Philip Hudson
Chris Lewandowski
Our Board
Paul Deneen OBE JP DL – Independent
Chair 2013-17
Dr Sheila Marsh 2013-17
Ian Stead 2013-17
Colin Javens 2013-17
Allan Lloyd 2013-17
Gwyneth Gill 2014-17
Debra Tritton 2015-17
Sheila Archer 2015-17
Healthwatch Herefordshire with the
Mental Health Question Time Panel, left
to right : Ian Stead HWH Board Member,
Jacqui Bremner – HWH Operational Lead,
Mary Simpson HWH staff, Dr Simon Lenanne
- CCG lead for mental health, Helen Osborn
- Herefordshire Sixth Form College, Jade
Brooks - Operations Director CCG, Richard
Kelly - Mind, Sheila Archer - HWH Board
Member, Dr Jane Melton - Director
2Gether, Christine Price – HWH Staff, Dr
Chris Fear – 2gether Operations Director,
Emma Paver - Addaction, Gwyneth Gill –
HWH Board Member, Paul Deneen – HWH
Chair, Dr Sheila Marsh – HWH Board
Member.
Healthwatch Herefordshire 7
Your views on health and care
Healthwatch Herefordshire 8
Listening to local people’s views
Young People & Mental Health
You told us in 2015-16 that we should focus
on Mental Health in the future. Following on
from last year’s Mental Health Question Time
event, we decided to focus on children and
young people’s experiences of Metal Health,
Looking at what helped them most and what
helped them least.
Healthwatch have worked with organisations
in the county who support young people
experiencing mental health issues including:
Close House, Supported Housing for Young
People’s Project, Counselling Learning
Development & Strong Young Minds,
Addaction, Hope Support Service and Talent
Match, to gather the views of vulnerable
children and young people in the county.
This report has been shared with
commissioners and providers and we have
recommended that Young People are
supported in 2017-18 to produce a self-help
guide, for achieving and maintaining young
people’s mental health.
“65% of the young people wanted a
self-help guide with tips for
achieving and maintaining good
mental health”
Primary Care: Enter & View
What we’ve learnt from visiting services
In 2015-16 21% of our enquiries were about
GP surgeries so we made this our priority
for Enter & View for 2016-17:
We visited 8 out of the 24 GP surgeries
in the county with our authorised
representatives, to gather patient and
carer views on the services they receive
at their surgery.
We visited the following surgeries:
Alton Street - Ross on wye
Marches - Leominster
Colwall
Ewyas Harold
Fownhope
Kington
Quay House – Hereford
Belmont - Hereford
Our Authorised representatives were: Mary
Simpson, Ian Stead, Margot Forde, Allan
Lloyd, Paul Picken, Paul Prouse, David
Faulkner, Marcus Allen, June Emberton,
Joyce Thomas, Brenda Bayliss, Colin
Javens, Emily Warmington and Jonathan
Smith.
Healthwatch Herefordshire Chair 2013-17
Paul Deneen OBE JP DL, with the staff
team: Christine Price, Mary Simpson,
Richard Dudley, and volunteer- Joyce
Thomas MBE
‘Patients surveyed in the 8 surgeries were overwhelmingly positive about the services they receive. A small number of common issues were raised that gave useful feedback to surgeries on how they could make improvements’.
Healthwatch Herefordshire 9
Helping
you find the answers
Healthwatch Herefordshire 10
How we have helped the community access the care they need
Healthwatch Herefordshire
responded to 155 requests for
Information & Advice in 2016-17
Consumer Principles
The top areas of concern you called to tell
us about in your experiences were:
43% of enquiries related to Access to
services (eligability, availablity and
physcical access).
21% of enquiries related to receiving a
safe, dignified and quality service (being
treated with dignity & respect, receiving
the right treatment safely, good
communication and well organised
patient journey when coordinating with
other services).
The top three services you told us about in
2016-17 were :
33.5% about Hospital Services
23.2% about GP Services
12.9% about Adult Social Care
Services
‘Thank you for helping us to get the right
care for my grandad when he fell and
went into hospital. Healthwatch ensured
that we were listened to & informed,
received a safer service and were
treated with dignity & respect’
0.0 20.0 40.0
Pharmacy Services
Tertiary Care
Wales NHS
Opthalmology
Community Equipment
Children's Services
Healthwatch
Residential/Nursing Homes
Voluntary SectorOrganisations/Community…
West Midlands AmbulanceService & Patient Transport
Dental Services
Clinical CommissioningGroup
Homecare Providers
Mental Health
Adult Social Care Services
GP Services
Hospital
Percentage of Information and Advice Enquiries by
Organisation 2016-17
Access43%
Choice3%
To be listened to
10%
Essential Services
11%
Safe, dignified and quality
service21%
Healthy Environment
3%
Information and Education
9% Being Involved
0%
Healthwatch Consumer
Principles
Healthwatch Herefordshire 11
Making a difference together
Healthwatch Herefordshire 12
Autism Awareness, improving access to diagnosis and training for GP’s.
You told us from 2013-15 that accessing
services as a person on the Autistic Spectrum
was often difficult. You also told us that
accessing a diagnosis for children and adults
was difficult in Herefordshire, so we focused
our work in 2015-17 on this topic.
We surveyed 100 people on the Autism
spectrum and their carers to gather an
understanding of the issues they encounter
when accessing the GP surgery and accessing
a diagnosis and the importance of having a
diagnosis
We published this work and shared it with:
our Clinical Commissioning Group, GP’s, Local
Authority, Voluntary and community sector
support organisations and the Mental Health
Trust 2gether.
In partnership Healthwatch coordinated: a
training pack, a top 10 tips for GP’s and
facilitated a training session, involving people
with Autism and carers, for the 24 GP
practices in the county to:
Highlight where the GP services can make
a difference in helping people on the
spectrum to use services.
Improve access for those who need a
diagnosis.
Campaign for health representation to be
involved in our County’s Autism
Partnership Board in order to hear from
service users and patients’ how services
could be improved in the future.
‘Accessing a diagnosis is often a lengthy and
difficult process’.
’Some GP’s have good understanding of the
Autism Spectrum and go the extra mile’.
‘Over half of people surveyed without a
diagnosis, would like one’.
Working with other organisations
Healthwatch worked closely with the local
branch of the National Autistic Society,
service users and carers, and with the
county’s Autism Partnership Board, which
consists of service users’ carers and
organisations working with people on the
Autistic Spectrum.
GP Training event from Left to right: Dr
Simon Leanne – GP & Mental Health Lead for
CCG, Valerie Fitch - Service User, Carer and
Chair of the Autism Partnership Board,
Christine Price - Healthwatch Herefordshire
staff, Colin Javens - Healthwatch Board
Member Jade Brooks - Operations Director
CCG, John Gorman Local Authority
commissioner.
Healthwatch Herefordshire 13
Working with communities across the County
Healthwatch Herefordshire 14
Patient Participation Groups across the 24 GP Surgeries in Herefordshire.
One way Healthwatch worked across the
whole County in 2016-17 was to build links
with GP Practice patient participation groups
(PPG’s).
Healthwatch allocated members to each PPG
to attend their groups, to listen, to explain
the role of Healthwatch, and to illustrate how
Healthwatch can help their communities to
raise issues about health & social care.
In December 2016 we held a joint PPG
conference with the clinical commissioning
group (CCG) to build on the relationship with
PPG’s.
The conference was an opportunity to gather
views from the PPG members on the following
primary & secondary care topics:
What would make it easier to look
after your own health?
Travelling to hospital.
Access to GP Surgery appointments
Use of technology to support patient
access to healthcare.
Accessing more healthcare closer to
home.
Moving services out of acute hospital
into community settings.
What routine or non-urgent care could
be provided in community settings?
Where would it be helpful to access
healthy lifestyles information?
This feedback was used by the CCG primary
care and community services transformation
work programmes. Also Healthwatch fed this
information into the NHS Sustainable
Transformation Plan (STP) process as part of
a wider piece of work enabling the people of
Herefordshire to shape the STP Plan.
PPG conference left to right: Richard Dudley
– HWH Staff, Ian Tait – CCG Chair, Paul
Deneen - Chair of Healthwatch 2013-17
Other voice of Herefordshire engagements which fed into the NHS Sustainable Transformation Plan Process
Healthwatch ran three different online
surveys and attended 25 engagement events,
encompassing the following groups:
General Public
Carers
Children & Young People
Health & Care Workforce
Voluntary & Community Sector
Organisations
Stakeholder Groups
‘Healthwatch gathered the views of 1350
people on 8 topics’
Healthwatch travelled the county gathering views: across Hereford city, Leominster, Bromyard and Ross-on-Wye.
Healthwatch Herefordshire 15
Our plans for next year
Healthwatch Herefordshire 16
What next?
Healthwatch Herefordshire are already planning work for the next year on:
Enter & View in Learning disability settings.
Gathering feedback from people who have been through a safeguarding investigation,
working in partnership with our local authority.
Promoting the production by Young People of a mental health self help guide.
Accountable decision making:
We will be holding an annual conference in July 2017 for the public to choose our 6 topics for
work in 2017-18. We are asking people to choose their first and second choice from the each
of the six following areas:
Social Care & Community Care
1. Social care assessments & the new pathway adult social care.
2. Carers services. 3. Access to community services:
District Nursing, OT & Physiotherapy.
4. How easy is it for people to find support from their own communities?.
5. Residential Home Care. 6. Domiciliary care/ care at home. 7. Transitions for people with Learning
disabilities, services for children with disabilities.
Self Help/ Prevention/ Public Health/
Mental Health
1. Public Health – Healthy lifestyles. Prevention Services.
2. Addiction. 3. Sexual health. 4. Diabetes: prevention, management &
Continuing Support. 5. Low level mental health support and
community mental health to prevent crisis.
6. Group Specific Mental Health Issues: Transgender, Veterans, Eating disorders & self-harm in younger people, Refugees, Suicide.
Hospital (Secondary Care)
1. Your stay in hospital. 2. A&E. 3. Maternity. 4. Rehabilitation: post-operative or
post trauma patient journey to recovery.
5. Hospital Discharge.
Primary Care
1. Access to GP surgery. 2. Pharmacy Services. 3. Dentists. 4. Audiology & Ophthalmology. 5. Autism – raising awareness, improving
service experience and improving access to a diagnosis.
6. Support & self-help for long term health conditions.
Services across Health & Social Care
1. Transport: physical access to services.
2. Complex and multiple conditions and coordination of services.
3. Tertiary care: Out of County Treatment/referrals.
Group specific
1. Eastern European populations/seasonal workers view of health & care services. Potential joint Worcestershire project.
2. Palliative Care: experience of having choice for treatment of terminal conditions and choosing where to die.
3. Women’s health. 4. Men’s Health.
Healthwatch Herefordshire 17
Our finances
Healthwatch Herefordshire 18
Income £
Funding received from local authority to deliver local
Healthwatch statutory activities
£144,000
Balance brought forward 2015-16 £15,038
Additional income £10,000
Total income £150,000
Expenditure
Operational costs £33,567
Staffing costs £94,836
Office costs £8,392
Total expenditure £149,795
Balance brought forward £19,234
Healthwatch Herefordshire 19
Contact us
The organisation holding the Local
Healthwatch contract with Herefordshire
Council up to and including 31/3/2017:
Herefordshire Voluntary Organisations
Support Service, Berrows Business Centre,
Bath Street, Hereford. HR1 2HE.
Get in touch
Registered Office:
Healthwatch Herefordshire
Elgar House,
Holmer Road
Hereford
HR4 9SF
Telephone: 01432 364481
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.healthwatchherefordshire.co.uk
Twitter: @hwherefordshire
Registered Company Number: 10731637
We will be making this annual report publicly available on 30 June 2017 by publishing it on our
website and sharing it with Healthwatch England, CQC, NHS England, Clinical Commissioning
Group, Health & Social Care Overview and Scrutiny Committee, and our local authority.
We confirm that we are using the Healthwatch Trademark (which covers the logo and
Healthwatch brand) when undertaking work on our statutory activities as covered by the
licence agreement.
If you require this report in an alternative format please contact us at the address above.
© Copyright Healthwatch Herefordshire 2017