Healthwatch East Riding of Yorkshire have great pleasure in publishing our Annual Report for the period April 2017 to March 2018. The report highlights some of the work we have been doing in this, our fifth year of operation. It has been our busiest year yet and we have achieved a great deal.

Across the county Healthwatch East Riding of Yorkshire (HWERY) have been helping health and social care services to incorporate people’s views to make positive changes – from helping homeless people gain access to GP practices, to making sure mental health services are making more efforts to support working age men and sharing some of the best practice of residential care homes in the East Riding.

We could not have done so without the support of our partners and we would like to take this opportunity to thank them all for working with us over the past year.
Some of the highlights include
• 4000 people engaged
• 40+ Enter & View Visits
• Reports that highlight the public voice
• Travelling across the East Riding to hear everybody’s stories

Matthew Fawcett, Delivery Manager of Healthwatch East Riding of Yorkshire said
“This year has been one of our best years for Healthwatch. We have made some positive recommendations to hopefully drive improvement for the public who use local services. The report reflects the hard work by the Healthwatch staff team and our brilliant volunteers throughout the year. Healthwatch will continue to grow and get better every year and challenge health and social care services to improve”

You can find the annual report and all our other reports at http://www.healthwatcheastridingofyorkshire.co.uk/reports

Students at East Riding College recently completed a social action project by teaming up with Healthwatch East Riding of Yorkshire (HWERY) This project specifically looked at Smoking and garnered over 950 responses. This was a terrific platform for Healthwatch to support young people taking control of their own health and wellbeing by getting a better understanding of local services and statistics. 

HWERY work with the college in various ways throughout the years and through running workshops with the health and social care class we were invited by the tutor to help the students with this year’s social action project.
It was decided that it would be of great benefit to the students to emulate a HWERY report, following the process from start to finish. This would look great on the learners CV and they would learn various skills along the way. Having a finished report giving important information or recommendations with responses from health professionals would also be an outcome they could shout about in university interviews.

The students chose their own subject to look into, which was smoking. It was agreed that looking into this area could highlight the physical and mental effects of smoking, the services available in our area if you wanted to stop smoking and the numbers of those smoking in our region.

The report titled “5 Minutes Lost” examines the findings of the research conducted by students at Beverley East Riding College in partnership with Healthwatch East Riding of Yorkshire (HWERY) about smoking and local services.

The report looks at whether the public are aware of local stop smoking services and the success of them. The survey conducted looked at people’s current and past smoking status, the age they started smoking, and services and products available to assist in stopping smoking.

It looks to establish if there is enough information available to those who want to quit smoking with the help of the services available in our area, and possible ways to deter people from taking up smoking in the first place.

For the report please visit here 5 MInutes Lost Report

Improving access to GP services for people who are homeless

Nationally the awareness of those who identify as homeless has been on the rise. With an increase in the number of homeless individuals, questions have been asked about how they access Primary Care, if and when they should need it. Issues around address, documentation and identification are all valid issues as to why individuals may struggle to access primary care.

These reasons are not unique to homeless people and may affect many members of the public. As a result Healthwatch East Riding of Yorkshire have investigated the requirements of GP practices so that the public can be better informed about their rights when accessing Primary Care.

The report examines the process by which those with no permanent address, sofa surfing, sleeping rough and people with no identification register with a GP practice to access Primary Care. In addition to this Healthwatch also investigate which practices across the region are not following national guidance when faced with members of the public who may find it difficult to produce documentation.

For the report in full click here

The recent Healthwatch East Riding of Yorkshire (HWERY) Residential Care Good Practice Guide published in January 2018 highlighted many positive examples of good leadership.  Being well led is crucial to a successful team; however we also recognise that Registered Managers of residential care homes face a variety of pressures on a daily basis, some of which have been already been highlighted via our Enter & View process.

While recognising the crucial role that managers play in delivering high quality care, HWERY also acknowledge that managers need on-going support and encouragement and proper training and along with all staff should feel that they also have the resources to do their jobs.

Healthwatch East Riding of Yorkshire have therefore created a survey for Registered Managers of residential care homes to look at the pressures they face on a daily basis and to identify how they can be better supported in their challenging role.

To fill out the Residential Care Home Mangers survey

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/HweryRMsurvey

Healthwatch East Riding of Yorkshire (HWERY), the independent watchdog for health and social care services in the East Riding, has conducted research into Residential Care Homes in the East Riding. From this research HWERY has been able to identify some best practice that is being carried out.

During Enter & View Visits HWERY have seen positive examples of good practice in Care Homes under the following headings

• Arrival and change 
• What matters to me? 
• Community engagement 
• Collective living
• Healthy lifestyle
• Leading from the front

By sharing the good practice that HWERY found across the East Riding it is hoped that this can have a positive influence on driving up the standard of care in the region.

For the Good Practice Guide go here

Healthwatch East Riding of Yorkshire (HWERY) conducted research with children and young people from July 2017 through to September 2017 to find out which health and social care priorities are important in their lives.

The priorities covered a range of areas between physical and mental health. They were from national and local trends and areas highlighted from HWERY’s previous engagement and outreach with young people. The results will enable HWERY to have a clear understanding of what is important to children and young people across the East Riding to stay healthy.

The results from the report will help influence the work plan for HWERY for the next year.

HWERY is the voice of the public and as such need to consider public opinions when deciding on future areas of work and/or investigation.
The key findings from the report are:

• Mental health was identified as the highest priority overall  
• Emotional health and wellbeing areas had over half of all votes
• Healthy teeth were seen as the least important area over all 3 age groups

The report will be sent to all health and social care providers in the East Riding and can be downloaded here www.healthwatcheastridingofyorkshire.co.uk./reports

Healthwatch East Riding of Yorkshire (HWERY), the independent watchdog for health and social care services in the East Riding, has started a new initiative called the Read Right Project.
 
The project provides an opportunity for local services to work with a selected pool of Healthwatch volunteers to read publications & literature to gather feedback as to how they can be made more public & patient friendly.

Healthwatch Read Right volunteers will look specifically at the following:
• Is the document well presented?
• Is the language clear and simple?
• Simple translation of complex information
• Does the user feel more informed after reading the literature?

Healthwatch will then pull together the responses from our pool of volunteers and produce a response which may include some simple recommendations based on our volunteer feedback.

For more information and how to get involved please do not hesitate to contact our Volunteer Coordinator Michelle Harvey on 01482 665684 or alternatively you can email on mharvey@healthwatcheastridingofyorkshire.co.uk

Healthwatch East Riding of Yorkshire is the independent voice for the people of the East Riding, helping to shape, challenge and improve local health and social care services.

Have your say about health and social care in the East Riding and give your feedback on local services. We can also help by providing information about local health and social care services that you may find useful.

Your Voice Counts