Healthwatch Sandwell Annual Report 2015-16

This included major reports into care at Sandwell Hospital and into continuing healthcare assessments, which gained significant media coverage and started a positive dialogue with providers leading to improvements. These reports set out to capture the ‘lived experience’ of patients, as recommended in
the Francis Report, which we believe we achieved.

We were fortunate during the year to have extra resources that allowed us to increase our staff complement to eight. Although we reduced back to six at the end of the year, it allowed us to demonstrate what an appropriately resourced Healthwatch can achieve. This included a significant increase in public engagement allowing us to listen to more people than ever, and a full programme of Enter and View visits to health and social care premises.

We increased volunteer numbers, and were able to provide extra support to our volunteer Board members. This enabled them to be more effective in representing the patient voice directly in meetings with senior leaders in health and social care. I would like to thank all of the staff for their continued hard work and innovation.