Growing together

In Our Future Focus: the Healthwatch England Strategy for 2023-26, there is much mention of the challenges and opportunities we face, and how the context of health and care has changed, in a way that feels like it will be here to stay for the foreseeable future at the very least.

With the NHS and social care under unprecedented demand, and with its resources under enormous pressure, what does this mean for our role in ensuring people’s experience of care helps shape improvement? 

How can we be stronger organisations in our own limited resource context? How can you build impact in an environment where commissioning is often a challenge to stability? How can we perform our statutory duty of supporting you better?

As we celebrate our 10^th anniversary, we’ve much to be proud of - here’s why and what you have told us.

You show time after time how:

• You are connected to your communities –whether it is getting cervical screening sorted for Bangladeshi women, gathering feedback on cancer services from those facing health inequalities or bringing attention to the impact of vaping on young people
• You can bring the right people around the table to find solutions and act as a critical friend
• You stay true to your independence and hold bodies to account

We could list others, but here are some harder things that we hear:

• “I’ve never heard of Healthwatch”
• “You come over as amateurish”
• “You don’t meet your potential”
• “I listen to you grudgingly because of your statutory role”
• “Healthwatch need to reach beyond those we already hear from”

The response to these challenges could simply be: we do our best on the (shrinking) resources at our disposal. After all, our funding has reduced by 20% and 38% respectively, with significant variation across the network. Staff retention and the ability to plan ahead are also affected by short term contracts; and changing health and care structures make influencing harder.

But the truth is when the economic environment is harsh, it’s even more critical to demonstrate our value and ensure our house is in order – especially if we are making the case for our sustainability.

Our future relationship

In our strategy consultation, this is what you’ve asked us to do. This builds on what you’ve said to us and the team over the last few years.

Resource and commissioning 

If there is a legislative opportunity, we want to be ready with a sustainable and effective model – tried and tested if there is time. We’ll need your help to build on what’s already working well and look at the different options.

In the meantime, we will continue to work with local authorities to support effective commissioning, including looking at a more consistent approach to contract monitoring.

Our culture 

Culture defines our internal and external identity, motivates and keeps our people and makes us feel part of a team and movement. Many of you have already set out the values and behaviours that underpin your culture. We'll be looking at our own culture, and we thought it would be beneficial to do this alongside the network so we can all adopt or align to a shared set of values and behaviours. This work will commence in Autumn 2023.

Communications 

You told us that two-way communication between us should improve, the number of asks can feel burdensome, and it can be challenging to find the information and resources you need. We’ll review how we communicate, including revamping the network site – with your help. This will be ready by March 2024.

Impact, facilitating peer support and collaboration 

Mindful of your feedback about not making too many asks, we’re keen to better understand the impact you are achieving, spot any trends across the network to inform our policy work and make sure we promote it to all our audiences – including other Healthwatch. We will also offer to facilitate collaboration between Healthwatch and peer support networks – all the time making this optional so as not to impact your local priorities. We’ve started having these conversations at regional forums and will set out our approach in more detail before September 2023.

Professionalism and skills 

Our value relies on the professionalism and skills of our people – staff, boards and volunteers. With your help, we’ve set out the core skills and corresponding training and support options – many of which are developed and delivered by network members. You can find out more here.

Equality, diversity and inclusion 

We are continuing our commitment to support equality, diversity and inclusion, set out in the Roadmap. You will see we are offering a programme of training; we will be looking to profile Healthwatch activity that addresses inequalities; we will continue to support the Equality Diversity and Inclusion Peer Network and support sharing of best practice.

We also want to ensure we understand the Healthwatch network’s profile amongst communities and people with protected characteristics. We’ll need your help to significantly improve the response rate to our anonymous Healthwatch People Diversity Survey, as we previously had a low rate of return. We will shortly send you the survey questions in advance, so you have plenty of time before we collect the survey results in November 2023.

The value of Healthwatch

So yes - we must take on board the harsher things that are said about us, but equally I hear that we punch above our weight; that Healthwatch are being commissioned on the strength of your connection to communities, the value you bring to your systems; and how you support each other to overcome challenges and capacity issues.

I wholeheartedly believe that by supporting each other and collaborating on the priorities outlined above, we can secure our sustainability and unleash the full potential of the Healthwatch movement, which will ultimately improve care and the lives of the people we serve.