Healthwatch St Helens June 2014 Emma Rodriguez Dos Santos - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Healthwatch St Helens – June 2014 Emma Rodriguez Dos Santos

Background • Healthwatch St. Helens – established April 2013 • Set up as a company limited by guarantee • Recruited committee members and Directors, etc. • Developed skills and systems over first year • Consulted public on what its priorities should be Today: • First year’s activities • Work plan priorities – consultation results • Future work

Some activity figures that you might find interesting… • Attended 400 meetings • 129 outreach visits to groups and events (6 months fully staffed) • 935 volunteer hours (min.) have been put into Healthwatch work • At least 50 people signposted for help or information • 34 individuals have received Level 3 independent advocacy support re. NHS and social care complaints (new element to Healthwatch)

Governance & structure We have a committee of 12 and 3 directors, soon to be four. Skilled people, both with and without health & social care work experience, 2 away days and skills sessions, further induction training July for new members. Committee members and ‘Friends of Healthwatch’: • support the knowledge base, bring in experiences • drive changes, attending essential meetings or partnerships, • supporting outreach events, • involved in visits to health and care premises, etc. (comparable with other Merseyside and Cheshire local Healthwatch) Support team of 4 FTE staff and infrastructure services from VCA, including local base and freephone/website services available 24/7

Themes and trends Concerns or issues coming to Healthwatch St. Helens (top 5): • Service quality - 122 occasions • Access to Services (or lack of) – 102 occasions • Adequate representation (lay people in decision-making) – 82 occasions • Safeguarding vulnerable people – 68 occasions • Attitudes of staff – 43 occasions Trends from Complaints Advocacy - our referrals and other direct contacts – mapped to local Merseyside Trusts and CCGs: • Multiple aspects of clinical treatment • Failure to diagnose a condition • Communications (including appointments, delays and cancellations • Attitudes of staff

Advocacy support Healthwatch Independent Complaints Advocacy - found that they have less referrals from: • people from ethnic minorities • children & young people • people with disabilities Share patient experiences and case studies, we can use these for patient and user experience reports – to demonstrate to providers where improvements need to be made.

Achievements: • Changed how St. Helens & Knowsley Trust responds – with help from the CCG – now have a rolling action plan addressing themes • Better relationship with 5 Boroughs Partnership – responding to concerns about culture, local people and groups believe we’ll get answers • Strengthened national rules on PLACE visits which are conducted by volunteers – Trusts are required to let patients/lay assessors lead, etc. • Took action on equalities e.g. access to British Sign Language at hospital – front- line staff advised within 4 working days • Set-up a system to collect and analyse experiences of services - report in line with structures and use a data Hub to compare local issues with regional and national

Things that didn’t go so well: • Board members – limited opportunity to demonstrate leadership, decisions about direction difficult as had to be ‘hands - on’ delivering task groups … Training and skills days helped the committee to see its role more clearly and when to hand over a problem e.g. falls prevention issues ‘Friends of’ role – wider memebrship • Most LINks didn’t have a process for making decisions about issues brought to them, so... Flowchart (see appendix 1) and matrix, using similar criteria that Health and Wellbeing strategy did – so that issues can be tracked by committee and public. (Shared via HWE as good practice)

Priorities consultation - headlines • 500 Reponses, 302 of which were members of the public • Less than 20% of the replies were on line, rest are face-to-face work. • We gained 118 new members! • 179 responses from people that weren’t Healthwatch members • Ages of the participants were from 9 – 90 • 60%+ of the responses - direct work by Healthwatch staff and volunteers and less than 1% through meetings and partnerships.

What were the scores? Highest Response for Priority 1: Good Quality GP services (just over half the responses ranked this their top priority) “if this is right, everything else follows”… “If good quality GP services were available they should assist all areas” This is a key area for Healthwatch, already the committee have supported the CCG and Monitor to sample the public’s views about such services. We will continue to work with a range of activities, including: reps at strategic meetings, consulting on CCG plans, auditing Health Checks initiatives, etc.

Priority 2: Prevent mental ill health - 27% said this was their 2 nd highest priority “Mental health is poor standard; it gets left behind just because you cannot see it. It doesn't mean you are not hurting inside. You get left after seeing someone; it should be kept on the books and seen once a month on a regular basis” Further refine which aspects of mental health needs attention: e.g. enduring / long-term conditions e.g. depression e.g. a specific diagnosis dementia, autism, e.g. people’s health in prisons or secure mental health wards e.g. positive mental wellbeing.

Priority 3 - End of Life Care – 31% said their 3rd highest priority, Sampled broad ages - however majority were in the adults and older people’s age ranges... however still most people ranked this lower priority Only 15% ranked this their top priority (77/500) Quote: “It’s important at the time and then it’s not” Priority 4 - Making Choices and having control over your health & care – (least chosen priority area) Too vague?... Enquiries show that people want ‘choice’ in various aspects e.g. want advice about choosing a GP or a care home, more awareness, etc.

Future Challenges Fatigue is real, need to SEE RESULTS – commissioners and users! What do we need from you to achieve this? 1. Timely response from providers - 32 requests/responses to NHS and 17 to social care (local authority) But only 75% and 65% respectively were acknowledged, action is lower still... How can we show ‘Reflecting the public’s views’ and ‘Commissioners and providers have heard those views’ – if don’t reply? Legislation, relationships, MoUs, report back... 2. Give EVERY opportunity to demand better quality People fear will lose services because have complained, and providers cannot accept complaints that are anonymous and not written (for monitoring purposes). Requirements = barriers – literacy, drawn-out processes, etc. Culture of encouraging and learning from complaints. Healthwatch has various ways... Public area? Put out a box, postcards, freephone, website...

What next? For more information contact us: Freephone: 0300 111 0007 www.healthwatchsthelens.co.uk Twitter @HWStHelens Healthwatch St Helens 4 th Floor, Tontine House 24 Church Street St Helens, WA10 1BD