Semi-structured interviews are a widely used qualitative research method.

Semi-structured interviews help you understand why people respond the way they do, and uncover the values, attitudes, beliefs, and experiences that explain their views. and can be a powerful way to explore people’s experiences of health and care services.  

They are particularly useful when you need to explore sensitive topics.

Semi-structured interviewing starts with a pre-determined list of questions, but crucially allows people to go beyond the question list.  

Read our guidance to find out more. 

At Healthwatch, we want to hear from people about their lived experiences. Hearing from people with direct experiences of health and care allows us to build a picture of whether the provision of health and care across England works for people, and highlight when it doesn’t.

Fraudulent research participation is problematic because it can undermine data integrity and distort our findings. It also increases workload by requiring verification of the identity of potential participants and additional checks on the data we collect to ensure its validity.

This guidance outlines strategies for minimising fraudulent research participation and identifying suspicious or fraudulent research data in surveys, interviews and focus groups.

This latest impact tracker has been designed to help your Healthwatch more easily record and update notes of outcomes you are working towards, keep track of follow-up dates and then summarise what you have achieved.

Integrated into the national digital platform, you can use it flexibly in whatever way best suits your team. The level of detail you record is entirely up to you. Decide how to incorporate completing it into your own ways of working.

It could be just what’s needed to help ensure everyone’s follow-up actions are stored in a single location that’s accessible to you all.

About this resource

The tracker will help you to:

• Plan follow-up work to check what success you've had.
• Reduce the possibility of things being overlooked.
• More easily access details about your achievements for reporting and publicity purposes, including an ability to download all or selected content to a .csv file for use elsewhere.
• Share your achievements with Healthwatch England, should you wish, so that we can promote these during national conversations.

Your entries on the tracker stay confidential to your Healthwatch unless you choose to share them with Healthwatch England.

Would you like to try out the impact tracker?

To arrange a short demonstration, just contact jon.turner@healthwatch.co.uk .

It’s user-friendly, and if you’d like to start using it after a demonstration, access is easy to set up.

Continuing to use the previous Excel version of the tracker?

If you have any questions about the previous version of our impact tracker, please email impact@healthwatch.co.uk

You can also continue to use this email address to send a copy of your ‘sharing sheet’ if you’ve selected entries on your Excel version impact tracker to share with us.

We want to help you get the most out of our new online community hub, Workvivo. We've put everything you need to get started in one place. 

1. Workvivo Walkthrough
2. Healthwatch Online Community Tips and Tricks
3. New account request or account amendments
4. FAQs

Workvivo Walkthrough

This is the recording from the launch walkthrough webinar. It covers elements such as how to post, change your notifications, access spaces, changes to teams, and much more.

Healthwatch Online Community Tips and Tricks

On the platform, we have a dedicated space (the new name for groups) with walkthroughs of all the main features, whether you use the desktop version or the mobile app. 

• Healthwatch Online Community Tips and Tricks

New account request or account amendments

If you or a colleague needs access to Workvivo or you require amendments to your accounts that you cannot change yourself, please complete the form:

• Tell us if you would like access to Workvivo?

Welcome to our comprehensive suite of Enter and View resources and training materials. 

Here, you can find ready-to-deliver sessions to run for your volunteers. There’s an introductory training for anyone new to conducting Enter and View visits, with both classroom and online versions, and a follow-on course focusing on residential and nursing care home visits.

To complement this work for residential and nursing care homes, there’s also a conversation prompt sheet for the day of the visit and a template for your final report.

You can adapt and edit all these resources to meet your own needs.

Introduction to Enter and View training

All Healthwatch can carry out Enter and View visits, and authorised representatives are needed to do this. You told us you would like help training your volunteers and staff to become authorised representatives.

Thanks to Healthwatch Redbridge, which produced the introductory training pack and supporting materials, you can be confident that your session will be based on their wealth of experience. The pack includes slides, handouts, case studies, and comprehensive session plans for both online and classroom-based sessions.

Step-by-step instructions will help you prepare and deliver your training session.

Enter and View for residential and nursing care homes training

The majority of Healthwatch Enter and View visits are to care homes. You told us you would like help to further develop the skills of authorised representatives who have completed the introductory training.

Thanks to Healthwatch Milton Keynes, you can use the PowerPoint slides here to deliver an in-person or online session that helps people focus on key issues for care home residents and ensure visits are as impactful as possible. It’s ideal for authorised representatives who are just starting on their visits but also allows those who have been in the role for a while to reflect on their practice.

Healthwatch Milton Keynes has extensive experience undertaking this work in care homes, so the programme includes a useful mixture of knowledge, insight, and tips. Thanks also to those other Healthwatch who fed in comments and suggestions as the training was developed to help ensure it covers as many key areas as possible.

The notes section of the PowerPoint slides includes all the instructions for you to deliver the session to your group. There’s a separate Word document that just includes your trainer notes.

There’s also a version of the slides without the notes, which you can send to participants in advance should they request this.

Enter and View for residential and nursing care homes: practical resources

Healthwatch Milton Keynes, with input from other Healthwatch, has developed templates for you to use for visits to residential and nursing care homes. These help authorised representatives focus on the key areas of importance for residents and ensure a visit is as effective as possible.

The conversation prompt sheet provides suggestions for topics to explore with residents and staff and also includes prompts to help focus on the most important issues when observing life in the home.

Used alongside the accompanying Enter and View report template for care homes, you can be sure of increasing the opportunity for impact with your Enter and View work. There are two versions of the report template, allowing you to use either a large or small photograph on the front cover.

We want to help you get the most out of your marketing and make an impact on your audiences. We've put together some helpful templates you can localise and adapt for your traditional or, digital marketing activities. 

1. Print templates
2. Social media templates
3. Translated leaflets
4. Email marketing 

Print and publication resources

• NEW Business card template
• A2/A3 light blue poster template
• A4 "About us" leaflet (dark blue)
• A5 "About us" flyer (for the public)
• A5 "About us" flyer (for professionals)
• Postcard template
• A4 poster templates
• Communications strategy template
• Healthwatch values pledge cards
• Healthwatch values poster

Social media templates

4:5

• Quote card
• Text card
• Image card (image top and bottom)
• Stat card
• Carousel - advice and info
• Carousel - news and reports

1:1

• Quote card
• Text card
• Image card (image top and bottom)
• Stat card

9:16

• Text card
• Quote card
• Image card (image top and bottom)

16:9

• Text card
• Quote card
• Image card (navy)
• Image card (tints)

Translated leaflets

About us

These cover basic information about Healthwatch in a range of languages. You can add your own logo, images and contact details. There is also an English version, where you can make changes to the wording.

• Bengali
• Chinese
• French
• Gujarati
• Italian
• Lithuanian
• Polish
• Portuguese
• Punjabi
• Romanian
• Spanish
• Turkish

Email Marketing

• Email headers

About

Volunteers' Week celebrates the amazing contributions volunteers make to communities across the UK.  

We want to dedicate the week to celebrate all of our local Healthwatch volunteers. We want to focus on long-term volunteers who have volunteered with us for longer than five years, but we will also celebrate the rest of our volunteers.  

Each day we will focus on a different area of how volunteers make a difference and how volunteering can help you.  

Resources

Video 

You told us that you would find it helpful if we grouped our learning and development offer into pathways linked to key Healthwatch roles and responsibilities.

There are some core activities that all local Healthwatch must do.  These will be carried out by different people in each local Healthwatch, so we have focused on activities rather than job titles.  We have a range of training, peer networks, guidance, and e-learning courses to help you develop your skills and build your confidence in these areas.  The activities are: 

• Welcome to Healthwatch 
• Providing information and advice to the public 
• Gathering views from the public 
• Making views known and using them to improve services 
• Reaching people and communicating the difference we make  
• Managing volunteers 
• Running a Healthwatch  

How to use the framework 

There is a page for each core activity with the keys skills you need to carry them out and the learning opportunities that will help you. New members of staff or volunteers may want to complete the whole pathway, more experienced people may just want to plug gaps in their learning.  

Everyone learns differently so we have colour coded the different learning opportunities so you can choose which suits you best. Where there are several learning opportunities next to a skill, you can choose which suits you best and do as many as you wish.  The links will take you straight to the session to book, the e-learning course or the resource to download.   

From left to right you will see webinars, e-learning courses, peer network meetings, guidance documents then bespoke support.  This is not in any priority order, just for ease of reading.  

About this resource 

We have created a learning and development calendar for the year ahead so you can see what training opportunities from us you will have throughout the year.  

We have designed this plan based on your feedback and the Healthwatch core skills framework. 

Events are now available to book through our training and events section. Please always remember to let us know if you can no longer a session that you book in advance, so we can offer the place to someone else.