Healthwatch

Helping you put the public voice at the heart of every decision

Our role is to champion the interests and views of local people using health and social care services and give people the opportunity to speak out, be listened to, and to ensure their views shape the way services are designed and delivered. We take our role very seriously and in each area where we deliver Healthwatch, we have a team of highly trained and experienced local staff who work very hard to create partnerships and collaborative relationships with local services and providers, in order to discuss issues openly and effectively and create impact form the work they do.

Healthwatch Services

Local Healthwatch services exist to ensure that people are at the heart of care. Healthwatch was set up by Central Government, through the Health and Social Care Act 2012,  to be the independent patient champion for health and social care locally. 

Dedicated teams of staff and volunteers listen to what people like about local health services, and what could be improved. These views are then shared with the decision-making organisations, so together a real difference can be made. People can also contact their local Healthwatch to find the information they need about health and care services in their area.

Local Healthwatch organisations also share the feedback they receive about services with Healthwatch England, a national body supporting the local Healthwatch across the country, to help improve the quality of services across the country. You can find out more about local Healthwatch by visiting Healthwatch England

We provide a different approach to Healthwatch by supporting our local delivery teams with our social research team, to enhance local research projects and maximise the insight we obtain from local feedback so that we have evidence to support the recommendations we make to local service providers. 

We are incredibly proud of what we have been able to achieve with Healthwatch so far, including national recognition for some of our work. 

We currently provides Healthwatch in the following areas: 

• Walsall

• Healthwatch Bedford Borough

• Warrington

• Halton

• Healthwatch Telford and Wrekin

• Sandwell

• Stoke-on-Trent

We are highly experienced in delivering Healthwatch services

We work in an extremely complicated and challenging environment. As Healthwatch deliverers we understand how difficult it is just to keep on top of the day job, let alone add value and innovate. This is why we have built up a team of expert social researchers and invested heavily in the latest technology platforms to support our Healthwatch community engagement activities and social research and insight programmes. 

Our Healthwatch teams make a real difference and are increasing the impact of our work with both providers and commissioners, through the provision of the following services.

Training

Build the capacity of your organisation to maximise the impact of its social research and community engagement activities. Our accredited training programmes are delivered either by in-house experts or a professional and experienced network of specialist partners. 

Whether you need to add value to your Enter and View activity, update your research techniques or improve the effectiveness of your volunteer management plans, we have training to suit. We also deliver ‘Train the Trainer’ activity across our programmes and have experience in helping support other Healthwatch boards in their development.