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 

Videos explaining our role

1. Who are Healthwatch?

2. How sharing your healthcare experiences can help improve health and social care services

Customising animations with your own logo

If you'd like to change the logo to your local Healthwatch, please contact hub@healthwatch.co.uk and we can change the logo for you. 

What this pack is for

We’re running a project to learn about the public’s experiences of GP referrals for specialist treatment, and the time they spend waiting after the referral and before their specialist care starts. 

You can help us out by sharing our survey. This communications pack has some tools to help you with this.

Navigate to:

• Background and objectives
• Key messages
• Web content
• Social copy and assets
• Email copy

Background and objectives

With much-needed focus from the Government and NHS on both GP and hospital appointments, we want to understand people’s experiences during the time after being referred but before being seen by a specialist.

We carried out a similar piece of work in 2023. Two years on, we want to know how things have changed. 

This survey is aimed at any member of the public who’s had a recent referral by their GP for any kind of specialist assessment or treatment. We’re using it to gather personal stories to give context to the polling we are running around referrals.

The survey covers all conditions, but we’re especially interested in experiences of referrals for cancer, mental health conditions, and long-term conditions.

Key messages

• Our previous research on referrals found evidence of a referrals “black hole”, with people experiencing hidden waits for referrals after their GP referred them but before the referral moved forwards.
• Two years later, there are still access issues, with many referrals being formally delayed or “deferred”.
• With a much-needed focus on both GP and hospital appointments, it’s important not to forget the hidden wait between a GP making a referral and a specialist service accepting it.
• By responding to our survey, you’ll help us understand the issues people still face with the referrals process, and call for change where needed.

Square assets  Instagram post assets  Instagram story assets

An effective communications strategy is important. It can help you engage local people, encourage them to use your service and bring to the attention of health and care services the improvements that people want.

This guide aims to help you consider the key ingredients for developing an effective communications strategy for your organisation. We have also developed a strategy template you can use locally. 

1. What do you want your communications to achieve?

It is vital to start by being clear about what you want your communications to achieve. So start by writing a purpose statement that explains how your communications will help deliver the objectives of your service.

Express your statement in plain English and try to answer the questions:

• What would success look like?
• How will our communications make sure we successfully achieve our objectives?
• What are we hoping to achieve with communications (change in attitude, greater awareness, behaviour change)?

2. Understand where you are now

Before you get into the detail, it is essential to recognise the context within which you communicate.

Be clear:

• How does your strategy links to your strategic priorities?
• What do you know about your audience?
• What have you learnt from your previous communications, and
• other factors like the external environment?

One tool for helping you assess the context is a SWOT analysis. A SWOT enables you to think about your strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats when it comes to questions like:

• The communication skills you have in-house or can purchase;
• The capacity you have available to communicate;
• The access you have to the right channels to reach your audience;
• The insight you have on what your audience thinks and feels and how they act;
• The customer experience you provide and the levels of trust people have in your service; and
• Your ability to creatively engage your audiences with your communications.

3. Identify your audiences and set your objectives

At this point, it is essential to think about who you want to engage with your communications. The more you define your audience, the better the outcomes will be, but it’s necessary also to ask:

• Why? Or in other words what’s the purpose?
• How will you do it?
• What will be the outcome?

Answering these questions can help you ensure that your objectives are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound).

These are just example objectives, and you might have different outcomes you want to achieve, such as:

• Increasing the loyalty or frequency of people who use your service;
• New professionals seeking your advice and insight;
• Reducing the churn of volunteers; or
• More partners who advocate on your behalf.

4. Harness your insight & develop a clear proposition and message

Your detailed, audience-specific messaging will change with each campaign. Yet, at a strategic level, you need to understand your proposition for each audience and the consistent points you want to get across every-time you communicate.

Your proposition should tell your audience the value of the service you are offering or how it meets their needs.

To develop a compelling proposition (and the messages that support it), you need to understand your audience needs and interests, why they engage with Healthwatch and the barriers that might prevent them.

5. Decide how you will reach people and encourage them to act

Insight also plays a big role in deciding which channels or approaches you will invest in to deliver your strategy. Questions to consider include:

• How do people find you?
  • Using search
  • Using social media
  • Via PR in the local media
  • Via on-line and off-line partnerships with services or community groups
  • Via email or events
• Once they find you, do they have a good experience and act?
• Once they act, do they come back to you? Do they tell others about you?

It’s unlikely that you will only invest in one channel. Still, you need to understand which channels deliver you the greatest return, which channels you need to improve and the journey you want your audience to take.

6. Describing your approach

The crux of your strategy is to choose what tactics you will focus on to achieve your objectives. The tactics you choose should link back to the context and be based on audience insight. The final tactics can focus on a range of things, including:

• The channels you choose to focus on improving;
• The processes you decide to adopt; and
• The audiences, issues and content types you think you should prioritise.

The vital step is to refine them down to those that you believe will help you best achieve your objectives.

7. Develop your plan and approach

With a rapidly changing environment, we would suggest taking an agile approach to planning how you will deliver your strategy.

First, size work that is not time-sensitive but needs to happen to achieve your objectives and put this into a pipeline that follows a logical order. Taking this approach means that you can adapt to external pressures while still making progress with high priority improvements.

Secondly, plan out the number of time-sensitive communications projects you need to run.   

An agile approach is essential when it comes to delivering communications because the process helps you continually learning from each activity to help maximise the impact of the next.

One model is known as OASIS, where you follow five steps to help bring order and clarity to planning and delivering each communications project.

The five steps you need to create a campaign using OASIS are:

• Objectives
• Audience/Insight
• Strategy/Ideas
• Implementation
• Scoring/Evaluation

The idea is to use this process of constant learning to refresh your approach as you go.

8. Deciding what to measure

Do you know how your communications are working now? What things are worth measuring and why? These are questions you should consider when deciding how you will measure whether your tactics are delivering your objectives.

One way to measure your communications is to think about the journey someone takes when they use any service. First, you become aware of service. Then you think about using it. Then you do use it and, if it meets your needs, you then use it repeatedly. You might even become an advocate, telling others about it.

Other factors you should consider

This guide is not exhaustive. There will be other considerations that you might want to articulate as part of your strategy. These considerations include:

Resources:

• Who will lead on this work?
• Will delivery be in-house, or will an agency do it?
• What is the total budget required?
• Is this funding already in place?

Risks:

• What are the risks of what you are planning to do?
• Are these risks likely? And if yes, what would be the impact?
• What can we do to reduce any impact?
• What assumptions underlie this strategy and have they been tested?