0300 777 6543 Spring 2015

Telephone - 0300 777 6543www.healthwatchhalton.co.uk

Healthwatch Halton is the independent public voice on health and social care across Halton with the role to listen and the power to significantly influence change within the health and social care system.

We want to hear your stories and gather your experience of using health & social care service such as Hospitals, GP surgeries, dentists, pharmacies, ambulance services, care homes or community services.

We need your help to gather as much feedback as we can on how our local services are performing. If you have had a good experiences of using a service we’d love to hear about it. If things didn’t go quite as you expected or the treatment you received wasn’t up to standard, let us know.

Over the coming months you may well notice our posters and feedback leaflets popping up in venues across the borough. You can send us feedback in a variety of ways; by FREEPOST using our feedback leaflets, or online at www.healthwatchhalton.co.uk via a smartphone, tablet or PC. You can even send us your experience through Facebook.

You can also contact us on 0300 777 6543 or drop in and visit our offices at St. Marie’s, Lugsdale Road, Widnes, WA8 6DB.

Giving feedback takes a few minutes, but the impact could last a lifetime.

You may also see our Healthwatch team out and about in Halton talking to people and asking for their opinions on which health & social care issues are important to them, if you seet us at any events in the borough feel free to come over and have a chat and give us your views.

In the previous issue of our

newsletter in December

2014 we gave details about

our ‘Access to GP Services’ report that had just been

published.

Our report, based on the

findings of a survey we car-

ried out in mid 2014, con-

tained a number of

observations and recom-

mendations and was sent to

Halton Clinical Commission-

ing Group for a response.

The report and a list of rec-

ommendations and obser-vations were sent to Halton Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). We’re pleased to say we received the CCG’s official response to the rec-ommendations in January.

The CCG’s Primary Care Quality & Development Working Group have now produced an action plan drawing on the 11 recom-mendations made by Health-watch Halton which will form part of the GP Practice Strat-egy review

CCG respond to report recommendations

Are you interested in finding out how NICE guidance could help improve the health and wellbeing of people in Halton and the surrounding area? Do you want the chance to put questions to NICE’s Chief Executive, Chair and senior staff directly? Then book your place today to attend NICE Question Time, and the NICE Public Board meeting on Wednesday 18 March 2015 at The Pyramid Centre, Warrington.

NICE Question Time is a unique event, giving you the opportunity to put questions directly to the NICE Chair, Chief Executive and other NICE senior staff. The event is open to all members of the public and the community and voluntary sector and NICE would be delighted if you could join them. It will take place between 12:30pm and 13:30pm, with an informal networking lunch beforehand at 12:00pm

For more information, or to register to attend NICE Question Time and the NICE Public Board Meeting, please visit www.nice.org.uk/warrington2015.

Please note, registration requires a NICE account, this is a free account and should only take a couple of minutes to activate.

NICE question time

Under the Government’s health reforms all 152 local authority are-as have a duty to provide an inde-pendent support service for those looking to raise concerns about the NHS. Yet with no similar duty or additional resources to support those receiving social care, coun-cils are leaving many thousands of elderly and vulnerable individu-als to fight their own battles when they are let down by their care pro-vider.

Healthwatch England’s recent FOI request revealed that just 1 in 5 councils, 26 of the 120 that re-sponded, said they offer a dedicat-ed complaints support service for social care users. Others authori-ties stated that such cases would be supported by the council’s general advocacy service, with re-

sources focused on helping those with learning disabilities or mental health conditions. However, more than a third (45 councils) stated that they don’t provide any advo-cacy or support service for those looking to complain about the quality of care they receive.

This lack of support is symptomat-ic of a wider problem with how complaints about social care are dealt with. Unlike in health, care providers don’t have to publish de-tails of the number of complaints made about them or indeed how they have changed their process-es as a result. There is also no re-quirement to report the number of complaints they receive to the Health and Social Care Informa-tion Centre, so the true scale of the problem is unknown.

Healthwatch England are there-fore publishing a set of standards for both health and social care complaints advocacy services for all people regardless of their needs or the service they use. This work was commissioned by the Department of Health following a commitment in ‘Hard Truths’ – the Government’s response to the Francis Inquiry and the Clwyd Hart Review. It sets out what people should be able to expect in terms of support from complaints advo-cacy services in making their voic-es heard.

These standards form part of a wider blueprint for legislative re-form of the complaints system which were presented to the Gov-ernment in the Healthwatch report last year – ‘Suffering in Silence’.

Patchy complaints support is putting vulnerable people at risk

Care home residents and other social care users struggle to get the support they need when it comes to complaining about the quality of care they receive.

Get a FREE mid life MOTThe NHS Health Check is your chance to get your free midlife MOT. For adults in England aged 40-74 without a pre-existing condition, it checks your circulatory and vascular health and what your risk of getting a disabling vascular disease is.

How do I get an NHS Health Check?If you’re in the 40-74 age group without a pre-existing condition, you can expect to receive a letter from your GP or local authority inviting you for a free NHS Health Check. Don’t worry if you haven’t got your invitation yet, as you will be invited for one over the next few years.

Online NewsletterDid you know that this newsletter is also available electronically?

If you would rather receive your Healthwatch Halton newsletter by email rather than through the post please contact us on 0300 777 6543 and speak with a member of the Healthwatch Halton team.

Alternatively, you can contact us via email at enquiries@healthwatchhalton.co.uk, giving your name and address details and we’ll update your details.0300 777 6543

@hwhalton

How to contact us

FREEPOST RTKC-YEJX-UEXR

St Marie’s

Lugsdale Road

Widnes

WA8 6BD

www.healthwatchhalton.co.uk

Talk to usWe welcomeyour views Sign up to Action on Stroke Month and

Make May Purple for stroke

The Stroke Association is calling on everyone to sign up to and get in-volved in Action on Stroke Month 2015. During the month of May the charity aims to raise awareness of the impact of stroke and provide prevention advice to communities around the country.

The charity now needs your support to Make May Purple for stroke while raising essential funds for its work.

It’s a little known fact among the general public that someone in the UK has a stroke every three and a half minutes. A stroke can happen in an instant but its effects can last a lifetime. Yet too many people still don’t understand the impact of stroke or the fact that it can happen to anyone at any age.

Money raised during the month will help ensure that we can be there for the thousands of stroke survivors and their families and carers who need us. To find out more and sign up, please visit www.stroke.org.uk/strokemonth