Issue - meetings

Francis Carol, Chair of Healthwatch Barking and Dagenham, presented their Annual Report for 2015-16, which outlined the work undertaken by the Healthwatch team and volunteers during that period.  The report also highlighted the challenges, consultations and interactions with the public, which had brought to light the public’s experiences and opinions, which were then fed back to both health and social care services commissioners. 

The Board’s attention was drawn to a number of activities, including:

·  Enter and view and project work.  A total of 34 recommendations had been included in the Healthwatch project reports and 26 of those had been accepted.  Lack of funding was given for the reason for some recommendations not being accepted and a response was still awaited on a number of other recommendations. 

Details were set out in the report on the visits to Morris Ward, Park View and Five Elms GP Practice and the project in regards to BHRUT Phlebotomy, which had resulted in improved marketing and communications on service availability and the overall patient experience,

·  A number of projects are undertaken in association with other three local Healthwatch Groups.  The Chair indicated that she was pleased to see this development and commented that this could help reduce pressure across the Healthwatch teams and allow for more time on local focus. 

·  Work with Partners on a number of Boards and Sub-Groups

·  Work with the BHRUT and CCG in regards to urgent and emergency care.  This had included over 1,000 face-to-face contacts /interviews with people about their views of on urgent and emergency care, in order to ascertain both their knowledge of other alternative health options and also why they had chosen to attend A&E rather than use other options.  The results had been fed back to the BHRUT Systems Resilience Group and were being used to in the development of a new care model.

·  A total of 508 individual enquirers had been helped, including signposting many of them to services. 

·  Homeless Health would be the next major project for Healthwatch.

In response to a question from Cllr Turner, Healthwatch advised that they are working on engagement with the harder to reach sections of the community and gave the example of the work they were currently undertaking to improve engagement with young people on health issues in association with the BAD Forum.

The Board:

(i)  Received the Healthwatch Annual Report 2015-2016 and noted the work and impact that Healthwatch had had in the last year; and

(ii)  Thanked Healthwatch and its volunteers for the valuable work they do.

Deferred to 27 September 2016 meeting.