On 26 Oct the Club’s “Health” team held an evening called “Make it Better Please” with speaker Paul Regan from Health Watch Hertfordshire (the independent consumer champion for health and social care in Hertfordshire) and John Wigley from the St Albans & Harpenden Patient Group (This group was established to ensure that local people and organisations have a voice in health and social care matters). With all the changes from the implementation of the Clinical Commissioning Groups and more to come in social care the evening included some lively discussions! John provided a handout which can be downloaded here: St Albans And Harpenden Patients Group Talk Oct 2015
Pictured here with John Wigley are Health Team Members Helen Byrne, Jean Eaton, Sheila Chadwick, Joan Williams and Pamela Rochford.
Report of the evening by Pamela Rochford:
We had two speakers; the first was Paul Regan, the communications officer from Healthwatch Hertfordshire. Paul distributed packs to us all (Make Your Voice Count) which contained his power point presentation. He explained how Hertfordshire Healthwatch is a consumer champion- they represent our opinions at the decision making level. Their representations are driven by what people of Hertfordshire tell them. They are a statutory organisation, and commissioned by the County Council. They work with voluntary and community sector organisations to ensure the voices of service user and communities are heard and represented. They also help people to find information about local health and care services. They are able to influence the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG); the CCG is not too good at communicating but this is improving.
Paul talked about their issues of concern, and that at present there were 57 projects they were working on. He talked about how they were involving young people. One of the projects he talked about was the ‘enter and view’ for care homes. He emphasized they were monitors, not inspectors. There is a summary report of the Care Home Enter and View Visits for 2014 in the pack. There is regular training for volunteers.
email: info@healthwatchhertfordshire.co.uk
Paul gave examples of how they had the power to influence care in the community. What is working well and issues are identified. All the information is on the website. www.healthwatchhertfordshire.co.uk/ – there will be stakeholder panel on 4th of December which people can attend.
The second speaker was John Wigley, chair of the St Albans and Harpenden Patients Group. John provided a handout which can be downloaded here: St Albans And Harpenden Patients Group Talk Oct 2015 This is a ginger group. It is difficult for ordinary patients to make an impact on the system. The Group tries to put patients point of view to the bureaucracy. A new pair of eyes. On member sits on St Albans District Council, one on the local practitioners committee. He said that the patient and the public were the same- all members of the public were at some time patients. He gave as an example the Herts Valleys Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) cafe, and said the CCG organiser should at a future date report back on what was achieved at the cafe and any changes that arose. He mentioned that you need to treat people with consideration to get them involved.
The group was represented at the workshop on the 15th of August, for Your Care, Your Future; what is good about health in hospitals and GPs in West Hertfordshire. More information on the vision for the future – including the full strategic outline case – is available here: http://www.yourcareyourfuture.org.uk/vision-for-the-future/ The vision is a result of months of engagement with local people: patients, service users, carers, clinicians and other stakeholders. More information on this engagement is available here: http://www.yourcareyourfuture.org.uk/get-involved/.
John said that now was the time to ‘pile in’ with proposals-strategies to keep people healthy. This will leave more money available for unavoidable illnesses. The Patients Group holds puplic meetings to which everyone is invited and there is a newsletter every month. They support Healthwatch Hertfordshire. John suggested issues that Soroptimists could get involved with addressing: he felt there were gender inequalities which should be addressed in the system, (see Gender Matters in the Local Health System handout) and gave an example of one potential project to do with women and alcohol abuse. According to Public Health England, alcohol related deaths for women are higher in St Albans than in the rest of England. This falls into the category for a prevention strategy. Women are more likely to be treated for mental health problems than men, but there are more suicides among men.