A NEW watchdog is being launched to monitor health and social care in Staffordshire.
Staffordshire Residents Urged to Make New Year’s Resolution as Watchdog Prepares to Launch
A NEW watchdog is being launched to monitor health and social care in Staffordshire.
Healthwatch Staffordshire will investigate the views of patients and social care service users from April as part of national changes.
The new organisation will have statutory powers to enter providers’ premises to see at first hand how services are being delivered. Healthwatch Staffordshire will be able to recommend improvements and providers will have to respond to those recommendations.
All publicly-funded health services, including hospitals, GPs and dentists, will come under Healthwatch’s remit – as will adult and children’s social services.
It will be run by Engaging Communities Staffordshire (ECS) – an independent consumer champion set up last year to monitor service user feedback and carry out studies and consultations across a wide range of services, which has been awarded the contract for local Healthwatch in principle.
Robin Morrison, chair of ECS, said: “The people of Staffordshire deserve a powerful voice, and that is exactly what we will give them.
“The problems at Stafford Hospital are well documented, and they will hit the headlines again when the Francis Report comes out this month or next month.
“No-one can guarantee that health and social care will always be perfect, but an independent body with real teeth – backed by tens of thousands of residents – goes a long way to safeguard service users and their loved ones.
“I would like every service user in the county to make a New Year’s Resolution: to give feedback to local Healthwatch at least twice in 2013.
“That will be a tremendous foundation on which we can build for the benefit of everyone.”
Healthwatch is part of a national scheme, and local Healthwatch groups are being set up acrossEngland. They will have a wider remit than the Local Involvement Networks (LINks) they replace, and Staffordshire Healthwatch will have a seat on the county’s Health and Wellbeing Board – a forum of health and social care leaders that helps shape policies and improvements.
Mr Morrison added: “Staffordshire LINk sits within ECS so Healthwatch Staffordshire will be in prime position to take forward the excellent work of the LINk and its membership of 2,000-plus Staffordshire residents.”
Jan Sensier, chief executive of ECS, said: “ECS is completely independent and it will be looking at the bigger picture of almost any service that is bought using public money.
“Now we have been chosen in principle to deliver Healthwatch, we have real power to push through improvements to health and social care in this county.
“As ECS we have already been involved in projects that have led to positive change, such as work around breast cancer care and services for people with dementia.
“With Healthwatch Staffordshire, and with the backing of residents, I think we have started something that will be copied nationally. I would urge all service providers to get behind us and be part of a project that will put this county on the map for the right reasons.”
