Outstanding work leads to first joint Impact Award win
Two projects have been awarded the 2024 Healthwatch Impact Award for their exceptional work in using local people’s experiences to improve care.
The annual awards ceremony saw teams from both Healthwatch Milton Keynes and Healthwatch in Sussex take away top honours for their work.
With 18 shortlisted projects from across England, there were plenty of strong entries for this year’s Impact Award.
The award celebrates the difference local people make to health and social care services by sharing their feedback with our staff and volunteers.
The projects submitted ranged from an initiative to improve access to social care to work to ensure more people get health checks.
The quality of the work was so high that the judging panel named two winners for the first time.
Joint winners
Better mental health care for women in Milton Keynes
When a CQC inspection found issues with the relationship between patients and staff on the Willow Ward, an acute mental health care unit in Milton Keynes, Healthwatch Milton Keynes took action.
Speaking to 400 people, they learned that patients felt staff attitudes were poor. There wasn’t enough communication about discharge, and patients didn’t feel treated as individuals.
This feedback meant Healthwatch Milton Keynes could make recommendations that led to staff training on trauma-informed care, and the introduction of a Peer Support Worker to help with discharge.
These changes have improved relationships between staff and patients and made patients feel less anxious about the discharge process. Find out more about the project here.
Improved patient transport in Sussex
After local Healthwatch across Sussex heard about problems with Non-Emergency Patient Transport Services, they worked at a regional level to improve the situation for patients. Healthwatch East Sussex, Healthwatch West Sussex, and Healthwatch Brighton & Hove gathered feedback from the community and made recommendations.
New plans for patient transport services in the region reflected their recommendations. This work also helped improve patient communications, give clearer guidance about who is eligible for the service, and provide better information on alternative transport services. Read more about it here.
Praising the winners, chief judge and Chair of Healthwatch England Professor David Croisdale-Appleby, said:
“Your work shows exactly why listening to local people interviewed in their community is the key to understanding how best to design and deliver the most appropriate and relevant health and social care services.
"Because your communities have trusted you with their experiences, not only have you helped services identify problems, but you’ve also enabled them to provide better support through the understanding your research provides.”
Commendations for a further six Healthwatch
Healthwatch highly commended for their work were:
- Healthwatch Herefordshire, whose work to understand and address barriers preventing people with learning disabilities from having annual health checks led to greater awareness and better access among local people.
- Healthwatch Barking and Dagenham, for research into why South Asian residents are not taking up social care support. This led to the council working with community groups to tackle misconceptions and make information more accessible to those whose first language is not English.
- Healthwatch Liverpool, who raised awareness among healthcare professionals about how to better support people who have experienced sexual trauma. They also secured funding to provide trauma cards to patients so they can feel more confident when attending appointments.
Healthwatch commended for their work were:
- Healthwatch North Yorkshire: Adults experiencing mental health issues can now access support that’s right for them through First Contact Mental Health Practitioners (FCMHP) in GP practices across North Yorkshire after speaking up about their experiences of accessing mental health support.
- Healthwatch York: Adults entering the Autism and Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnosis pathway will experience a more straightforward journey and access to better support following people's feedback about their frustrations with changes to the diagnostic pathway that made getting a diagnosis or the right support difficult.
- Healthwatch Dudley: Those with additional communication needs and people without a fixed address can now access the GP services they need after speaking up about their challenges accessing care.
Recognising the brilliant work of all the nominees, Professor David Croisdale-Appleby said:
“You exemplify the best of Healthwatch. Your work demonstrates the very real difference Healthwatch makes to health and care every day – whether that's finding out what people want, helping people access support, or working with services to improve the care they provide.
"You and your communities should be proud of what you do, and the difference it makes to the quality of people’s lives.”
The other Healthwatch shortlisted were:
- Healthwatch Bolton: Women experiencing perimenopause and menopause can now access the support and care they need after voicing concerns about a lack of Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) information and poor attitudes of healthcare professionals.
- Healthwatch Brighton and Hove: Outpatients, carers, friends, and visitors to hospitals in Brighton and Hove can now expect a better welcome and communications about outpatients’ appointments after a lack of clear communication was identified as a barrier to positive patient experiences.
- Healthwatch County Durham: Farmers' access to healthcare has improved with the introduction of a pioneering new initiative offering walk-in clinics. This means they can now attend health checks at a time that suits them.
- Healthwatch Derbyshire: Following the development of an information pack, patients, their families, and carers will benefit from a significantly improved hospital discharge experience. Their voices are also feeding directly into ongoing service improvements across all discharge pathways in Derbyshire. And there is an increased focusing on providing better communication, clearer information, stronger coordination, and more personalised support.
- Healthwatch Gloucestershire: People with care needs and their unpaid carers have become Experts through Experience, highlighting issues around unmet needs and, directly influencing Adult Social Care services to ensure they meet the care needs of service users.
- Healthwatch Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Portsmouth and Southampton: People with additional communications needs can now access support that meets their needs after a campaign to raise awareness of the Accessible Information Standard (AIS) and efforts to educate those who need it on their rights to accessible information about their healthcare.
- Healthwatch Kingston Upon Hull: People experiencing homelessness now have improved access to Yorkshire Ambulance Services (YAS) after speaking up about their care needs.
- Healthwatch North and West Northamptonshire: People with Autism or Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and their families or carers have improved the pathway to diagnosis for those waiting after sharing their concerns around diagnosis and what support is available.
- Healthwatch Surrey: Patients and healthcare professionals in Surrey are now more aware of the importance of feedback and the difference it can make to services and overall patient experiences.
- Healthwatch Sunderland: Bangladeshi women can more easily access GP services after speaking up about the difficulties they had with booking systems and securing appointments. After listening to their experiences GP practices now understand some of the barriers this community may face and have made improvements to make it easier for them to use these systems.