Grateful today, powerful tomorrowAdam Harridence, Public Affairs and Stakeholder Engagement

@HealthwatchE

#thinkrights

Health and social care matters

At some point in our lives, we all need care, support or treatment.

• The NHS sees 27,000 patients every hour

• Over a million disabled and older people, and 67,000 children and young people receive care and support from their local council

• Over 5 million adults and over 166,000 children and young people provide unpaid health and social care to older and disabled family or friends.

People need to know what they can expect from health and social care so they can stay as healthy and independent for as long as possible.

A fresh approach

Having heard from the system, in Francis, Keogh and Berwick, we needed to hear from the consumer – to capture their views independently.

We felt that a fresh approach was needed to focus on what the consumer actually wanted and needed.

• To capture their views, we asked over 2,000 people using health and social care what mattered most to them?

• We ran a deliberative event with the public and sought views of stakeholders and partners to support findings.

• We have drafted a set of eight consumer rights to stimulate discussion across health and social care.

People’s experiences are mixed

On the surface, 7 out of 10 of us believe we get a good quality service from the NHS and social care services

But digging deeper with the public we found that:

• A shocking 1 in 3 of us have experienced, or knowing someone who has experienced, a serious mistake or abuse, leaving many of us with a deep concern over basic safety standards.

• Despite this, more than half of us who have experienced a problem with health or social care in the last three years did nothing to report it.

• Almost one in four people say that professionals aren’t really interested in what they have to say or do not actively listen.

People’s expectations are changing

We have been working with the public, and people who use services, to apply consumer rights to health and social care for the first time.

1.The right to essential services

2.The right to access

3.The right to a safe, dignified and quality service

4.The right to information and education

5.The right to choose

6.The right to be listened to

7.The right to be involved

8.The right to live in a healthy environment

Our vision for rights in health and social care

Next stepsThis is just the beginning of our work on consumer rights in health and social care.

By next year we will have:

• had conversations with the public, people who use services and people who advocate for them

• collaborated with people who use mental health services and children and young people, to understand better what these rights mean for them

• asked people to share their experiences of these rights to make sure local and national decision makers listen to, and act on, their experiences

• checked whether the right laws, policies and practices are in place so people can assert these rights and use our statutory powers to challenge local services and advise the Government where rights are being ignored or undermined.

But we cannot do it alone…

Working with the network

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Healthwatch England Support

Your work…

Let’s get talking!

Today we would like to start a conversation with you, local Healthwatch, to understand how you might put this into practice. We want to hear from you what these rights mean in your local community and how, together, we bring these rights to life in our work.

• Email me your thoughts at olly.grice@healthwatch.co.uk

• Join the webinar on 16 October

• Go to our website for interactive content and to leave feedback

• Take part in the online conversation on Twitter using #thinkrights

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Thank you!

13@HealthwatchE #thinkrights