Issue - meetings

A presentation on the Healthwatch Bromley Annual Report 2013/14 was given by Linda Gabriel, the Chair of Healthwatch Bromley.

Members were informed that Healthwatch Bromley was a company limited by guarantee, but that it had recently applied for charity status.

The presentation commenced with an overview of Bromley’s “Health at a Glance”, and then progressed to give an overview of the work undertaken by Healthwatch Bromley. The Board heard about the origins of the organisation, the various health and social care services that it monitored, and the various bodies that it reported to. An overview of the Board Members was provided, together with an exposition of statutory activities.

Linda Gabriel explained that it was the vision of Healthwatch Bromley to work towards a society in which people’s health and social care needs were heard, understood and met.

It was explained to the Board that the core statutory functions of Healthwatch Bromley were set out in section 221 of the Local Government and Public Involvement Act of 2007, and updated by the Social Care Act of 2012.

The Board heard that a statutory power conveyed to Healthwatch was the power to carry out “Enter and View” visits to publicly funded health and social care organisations. Subsequent to these visits, reports were drafted and sent to the appropriate providers, who would read the report and respond. These reports were published on the website of Bromley Healthwatch. The Board was advised “Enter and View” visits in 2014 had so far included visits to accident and emergency departments, and also to maternity services. Future visits for 2014 were planned to Day Surgery and Outpatients departments. This would be followed by visits to Care Homes. 

Linda Gabriel informed the Board that one of the statutory duties of Healthwatch was to obtain the views of local people about their experiences of local health and social care services and making these views known.

Other statutory duties included:

·  making reports and recommendations

·  providing advice and information

·  reaching views on various matters and reporting them to Healthwatch England

·  making recommendations to the Care Quality Commission

·  making recommendations to Healthwatch England to publish reports

·  giving Healthwatch England such assistance as it may require to enable it to carry out its functions effectively, efficiently and economically

An explanation was provided of the “feedback system”. In this context the key issue was to look for trends that required action; once this was established, intelligence would be sent to the relevant bodies for their action and response.

It was noted that much feedback had been received regarding GP practices and hospitals, and that a key problem had been identified as staff attitudes.

The Chairman asked for an explanation of what occurred during and after an “Enter and View” exercise, and an explanation of this was given. The Chairman also asked what would trigger an unannounced visit; the response was that there would normally be two main factors. The first one was negative intelligence, and the other was when the service was being un-cooperative.  ...  view the full minutes text for item 15