How will we improve support for you in 2022

Thank you to everyone who took the time to participate in our annual satisfaction survey. We had nearly 260 staff and volunteers respond this year. We appreciate the feedback and have used your comments to shape our offer over the coming year.   

What is working well? 

You made lots of comments about areas of support you think are working well. These included: 

• The training on offer is high quality, in-depth and relevant. 
• The updated brand, communications support and focus on Healthwatch impact were all areas highlighted in your comments. 
• The support for networking opportunities online and in meetings, with a particular mention to the help provided by the Regional Team. 
• Healthwatch week. 
• Opportunities to partner in both national and commissioned research projects. 
• Support with getting ready for Integrated Care Systems. 

What could be improved? 

You also suggested some ideas to help us improve our support offer. Find out below how we intend to resolve these for you. 

• You told us that it often feels like information overload! To try and resolve this, we will limit the new resources we produce so that you have time to digest information. 
• You asked for more communications support, including new templates and stock photos. Most of the new brand resources are now available or will be soon. We also have a photographer booked into come to local Healthwatch events engagement events, so you should also start to see updated photography on our library. 
• You asked us to clarify who our training and guidance will benefit. We have adapted the network site for events to try and make it clear who events are suitable for and will be trying to include these for the new e-learning courses we will be publishing this year. 
• You asked for more opportunities to connect to similar local Healthwatch who face similar challenges. We will promote the peer network groups more widely, so more people know about them and benefit from them. 
• You told us that sometimes it felt like we don’t always understand the reality of running a local Healthwatch, particularly from the smaller organisations. In response, we will try to look at ways to involve local Healthwatch more and help our staff learn more about how you work. 
• You told us that you want us to take on more of the challenges of running a small local Healthwatch – such as finance, human resources, and IT implications. Unfortunately, due to the diversity of Healthwatch and our capacity and know-how, we are unable to take this on. However, we’ll continue to keep our eyes open for opportunities where we can help you, such as Smart Survey – an enterprise level survey tool we’re offering for free for a year.   
• You asked for more opportunities to get involved with national projects and more regular updates on how local reports are used. We will certainly keep on doing this. 

How will we be supporting you over the next year? 

We’ve already shared our learning and development calendar for training events next year. We also have new resources planned that you have asked for to help you. We will also be focussing on: 

• Helping you reach sections of the community we don’t hear enough from 
• Helping you improve how to collect, store and share feedback 
• Supporting you to involve your communities in the decisions you make.