Your new digital impact tracker

Guidance - 2 September 2025

Plan follow-up activity, keep track of progress toward achieving anticipated outcomes, and record your impact with the digital impact tracker.

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.

Screengrab of Healthwatch England impact tracker

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.

Outcome Categories and reflective exercise tool

Blog - 7 August 2025

We’ve developed our Outcome Categories model with local Healthwatch to help the network identify and describe the full range of outcomes achieved and where and how this happens.

Impact Programme Manager Jon Turner introduces this one-off exercise you can complete to help strengthen how you report your impact and develop a business case for future opportunities.
Impact program manager Jon Turner

We know that local stakeholders understand that Healthwatch contributes to positive change for residents. But do they understand the full breadth of what our statutory activity achieves? Sometimes, the focus can be mainly on the ‘service change’ outcomes or wins from individual information and signposting enquiries, which can be easier to describe.

Reflective exercise tool  

This exercise tool has been created to enable individual Healthwatch leaders and teams to reflect on where your organisation achieves outcomes. It can help you to: 

  • Report impact across areas that are sometimes overlooked 
  • Think about how you verbalise what you achieve to maximise support 
  • Consider any gaps in outcomes you might have achieved but not identified 
  • Decide whether changing how you are currently prioritising your time and resources might be productive. 

The tool is presented in an Excel spreadsheet. The first tab contains full instructions for completing the one-off exercise. There are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers. Use it in whatever way best suits your current needs and circumstances. 

Downloads

Outcome categories reflective exercise tool (please save the file first and then open it with Excel for it to work)
Download (LSX 40 KB)

Full outcome categories discussion document 

This document details the full version of our Outcomes Categories model. It summarises our combined thinking based on initial conversations with fifteen lead officers, reflection on the types of outcomes and impact found in annual reports and elsewhere, and further discussions with several local Healthwatch leaders. It was the basis on which the reflective tool was developed. 

My thanks for invaluable input most recently go to Healthwatch Derby, Healthwatch Richmond upon Thames, Healthwatch Southend, Healthwatch Warwickshire, Healthwatch Essex, Healthwatch Newcastle and Gateshead, Healthwatch Southwark, Healthwatch Rotherham, Healthwatch Liverpool, and Healthwatch Milton Keynes. 

For further information about this or the wider impact programme then please feel free to contact jon.turner@healthwatch.co.uk

Following the expected closure of Workplace, we are pleased to show you the new platform Workvivo, which we are calling Healthwatch Online Community.

This session will be a live demonstration and walkthrough of the platform. Highlighting what’s the same and what’s new to ensure everyone can find what they are looking for. It will also provide information and links to the platform's mobile app.

Followed by a Q&A session to answer any queries you might have about the new platform.

No booking available

There has been a lot of interest in AI and discussion about how different Healthwatch are using it in their work. 

in light of recent announcements about Healthwatch, this session has been amended from the original plan and will focus on an introduction to AI.

This meeting is an opportunity to hear from Healthwatch Nottingham and Nottinghamshire about their journey with AI. This will cover elements such as:

No booking available

Canva templates and assets

Guidance - 22 May 2025

Useful templates and assets to help you with your digital and traditional marketing activities.
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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

Social media templates

4:5

1:1

9:16

16:9

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.

Email Marketing

Got a question?

If you need help accessing any of these resources, please email hub@healthwatch.co.uk

Healthwatch core skills framework 2025/26

Guidance - 30 April 2025

This framework will help you see the skills you use in your role, identify any gaps and find the support you need to develop or fine tune them.
Woman showing some paperwork to a group of people sat around desks

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.  

Downloads

Core skills framework
Download (LSX 56 KB)

Learning and development calendar 2025/26

Guidance - 30 April 2025

Check out the learning and development planner to see what events we are planning over the next year.
Three women sitting around a table looking at paperwork

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.  

Downloads

If you have any problems accessing this document please email us.   

EventEnquiries@healthwatch.co.uk

Learning and development calendar
Download (LSX 5.44 MB)

We know local Healthwatch want to be able to produce their own easy read materials, as part of the Healthwatch commitment to accessibility and inclusion. We have invested in training from Easy Read UK who have already worked with local Healthwatch and receive good feedback.

This training is delivered in two parts and you MUST be able to attend both of the following sessions to take part.

Session one – 10/9 from 9.30am to 1pm

Session two – 24/9 from 1pm to 2.30pm

No booking available

We know local Healthwatch want to be able to produce their own easy read materials, as part of the Healthwatch commitment to accessibility and inclusion. We have invested in training from Easy Read UK who have already worked with local Healthwatch and receive good feedback.

This training is delivered in two parts and you MUST be able to attend both of the following sessions to take part.

Session one – 11/6 from 9.30am to 1pm

Session two – 25/6 from 1pm to 2.30pm

No booking available

Many of you requested support with income generation in the 2024 learning needs survey.

This session is an opportunity to learn about exploring fundraising opportunities outside of core organisational contracts and to delve deeper into income generation. It is for people with more income generation experience than the ‘Bidding Basics’ session.

No booking available
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