Healthwatch East Riding of Yorkshire (HWERY), the independent watchdog for health and social care services in the East Riding, has been working with a local care home in the East Riding to improve its rating with the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

Spring House in Hornsea, who previously had an overall CQC rating of ‘Requires Improvement’ and was rated as ‘Inadequate’ in the area of safety, has now been rated ‘Good’ in all areas after working closely with Healthwatch East Riding over recent months.

After the last inspection, the new manager of Spring House contacted Healthwatch to see if there was anything HWERY could do to help them improve. HWERY met with the home and developed a plan of how to help them improve which entailed Healthwatch visiting initially every week under their “Enter & View” powers; enabling Healthwatch to get a bigger picture of how the home was working and giving opportunity to provide recommendations to directly improve the lives of residents living at the home.

During the course of their visits Healthwatch has seen the home dramatically change and improve. The staff and management team were committed to change and put in a tremendous amount of hard work to achieve the turnaround in results.

Matthew Fawcett, Delivery Manager for HWERY said:
“The hard work of the Manager and staff of Spring House is what has caused the improved rating score, without their dedication and openness to change, the home would not have scored as well as it did.”

Robyn Cross, Registered Manager at Spring House said:
“HWERY provided the management and care team of Spring House with excellent support and guidance throughout our improvement process. Spring House cannot thank Healthwatch enough for their input in our road to achieving good in all areas with the Care Quality Commission.”

Healthwatch are always willing to work with health and care services to improve. If any care home would like to work with Healthwatch please get in touch on 01482 665 684 or email enquiries@healthwatcheastridingofyorkshire.co.uk

Local Healthwatch from all over the country gathered in Stratford upon Avon recently for a two day national conference in which a select number of local Healthwatch are chosen to share their excellent work with the Healthwatch network. Healthwatch East Riding of Yorkshire (HWERY) had the opportunity to present two conference workshops.

The Healthwatch conference is an opportunity for over 150 local Healthwatch to get together and find out more about what is happening nationally and how we can work better locally and nationally. A packed two days and lots of workshops allows the staff to come back to the East Riding even more equipped to gather service user experiences and challenge local services.

HWERY were identified as leaders in working with young people and our work towards Enter & View. As a result HWERY presented two workshops to a total of over 50 different Healthwatch over the course of the two days.

“To be given the opportunity to put forward the work we have done in the East Riding is a massive accomplishment for the team. The staff have worked hard and to be identified as one of the premier Healthwatch in the country because of our work engaging with young people and the work we do with our Enter & View process is a terrific accomplishment.

To have the chance to really sing about the experiences of East Riding residents and share that information on a national stage shows that Healthwatch England are serious about taking on the views of people from our region to inform national change.

This is just the beginning for us as HWERY want to continue growing, developing and to be identified as leaders in a couple of areas is great but we need to continue banging the drum for the residents in our area.
We look forward to going back next year and sharing more East Riding experiences with our Healthwatch colleagues.” Manager Matthew Fawcett stated.

Healthwatch wants to hear from you.

Healthwatch East Riding of Yorkshire (HWERY), the independent watchdog for health and social care services in the East Riding, is conducting research into health/patient passports in the East Riding. They are seeking the views of the public and care professionals on the awareness and use of patient passports.

A health/patient passport is a document which accompanies a patient to hospital or a GP appointment which provides some basic information and medical history, any medications currently used and any reasonable adjustments to the environment which need to be made for the individual being cared for. They can be used for care home residents, people with long term health conditions and people who cannot readily communicate their health condition.

The survey is open to all East Riding residents and in addition to seeking service user feedback, HWERY are keen to understand health and social care professional’s experiences and perspective of health/patient passports.

Questionnaires can be completed online, via the Healthwatch website or paper copies can be sent out if required.

Delivery Manager at HWERY, Matthew Fawcett, said:

“This is a great chance for East Riding residents to tell us about their experiences of health passports or patient passports.”

“We would really like to encourage people to share their stories. Everyone’s experiences are important and can help make a difference to how services are provided now and in the future. Everything shared with Healthwatch will be treated with the strictest confidence and any information used in our report will be anonymous.”

In addition to the survey we are also encouraging people to come forward and share their stories. This information and in-depth look at a patients experience is crucial when looking at steps Healthwatch can take to help shape and challenge services to improve.

The surveys can be found online via the following links:

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/hwerypassport (Patient Survey)
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/hwerypassportcp (Health Care Professionals Survey)

In addition to the online surveys paper copies can be requested through the Healthwatch enquires email. enquiries@healthwatcheastridingofyorkshire.co.uk

Reaching out and touching on peoples experiences of the NHS.

Healthwatch East Riding of Yorkshire (HWERY), the independent watchdog for health and social care services in the East Riding, was out engaging people at Driffield Show finding out how local health and social care services have helped the public.

We often hear some negative stories about health and social care but Healthwatch wanted to do something different and reached out to the residents of the East Riding to find some of the positives local people felt about their care.

HWERY wanted to do something unique and engaging with the public. As a result of the engagement Healthwatch have created four art installations which highlight some of the local population’s comments on. We are now asking for any services to make themselves known if they would like one of these pieces to display in their own venue.

Delivery Manager at HWERY, Matthew Fawcett, said:
“This is a fun opportunity for people to tell us what they liked in their local NHS. The views that people shared with us shows how good local services are and this enables us to shine a light on the good work happening locally.

“What we are looking for now is if any local health provider would like to display these pieces of art, to show the support and positive thoughts of the public. If any service is interested please get in touch with ourselves”

If anyone would like to their experiences of local health or social care they can contact us on 01482 665 684 or email. enquiries@healthwatcheastridingofyorkshire.co.uk

For more information on the work of HWERY please visit: www.healthwatcheastridingofyorkshire.co.uk

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

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 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.