healthwatch solihull update report health and adult social

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Healthwatch Solihull Update Report

Health and Adult Social Care Scrutiny Committee

August 2021

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Healthwatch Solihull Update Report

Health and Adult Social Care Scrutiny Committee

August 2021

Contents

Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 3

Background - About Healthwatch Solihull ....................................................................................... 4

Our Model and Delivery Structure ..................................................................................................... 5

Our Statutory Functions .................................................................................................................. 5

Delivering Outcomes for Solihull Citizens .................................................................................... 5

Our Model .......................................................................................................................................... 6

Governance ....................................................................................................................................... 7

Staff Structure .................................................................................................................................. 8

Our Activity – Year 1 (July 2020 – June 2021) ................................................................................. 9

Our Annual Report 2020-21 ............................................................................................................ 9

Engagement, Involvement and Reach .......................................................................................... 9

Feedback Heard ................................................................................................................................ 9

Marketing and Communications ................................................................................................... 10

Community Engagement ............................................................................................................... 11

Citizen Voice ................................................................................................................................... 12

Information and Signposting......................................................................................................... 13

Influence and Impact ......................................................................................................................... 14

Investigation and Follow-up Reports .......................................................................................... 14

Volunteering ......................................................................................................................................... 16

Priorities for 2021-22 ............................................................................................................................ 17

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Introduction

This report highlights the achievements of Healthwatch Solihull in the first year of this

contract period (20-21) and the impact gained for Solihull citizens.

It has been a very difficult year for residents in Solihull, with Healthwatch Solihull’s

purpose becoming both more essential and more challenging during the Covid-19

pandemic. People’s care has been disrupted as health and social care services responded

to increased and unprecedented pressure, while social distancing restrictions made it

impossible to gather feedback from the public face-to-face.

Throughout the crisis, we have endeavoured to help services provide the best possible

support for those most in need, and reach more marginalised groups with essential

information about social distancing, testing and vaccines. Never before has our

Information & Signposting line been so important. It enabled us to provide support to

Solihull citizens.

We developed innovative ways of working online, providing new routes for individuals to

feedback about how the pandemic has affected them and reaching out to the most

vulnerable to highlight their needs. The feedback we received was used to help reassure

the public that services are listening to and acting upon their concerns, whichever of

Solihull’s many diverse communities they belong to.

The pandemic has revealed deep weaknesses in our society, but also the strength of

people coming together. It is this collective strength we draw upon and which enables

Healthwatch Solihull to make such a difference. We would like to thank everyone who has

worked with us in the past year. This includes health and social care staff, commissioners

and providers, third sector organisations and the many other stakeholders who share our

dedication to eradicating health inequalities.

Most importantly we would like to thank the thousands of people who told us their views

on health and social care services in the past year. We aim to ensure everyone can have

their voice heard and believe this report demonstrates the positive impact people sharing

their individual experiences has on health and social care services for all of Solihull’s

citizens.

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Background - About Healthwatch Solihull

Healthwatch Solihull is the independent champion for people who use health and social

care services in Solihull. We’re here to find out what matters to people and help make

sure their views shape the support they need, by sharing these views with those who have

the power to make change happen.

We also help people find the information they need about services in their area. This has

been vital during the pandemic with the ever-changing environment and restrictions

limiting people’s access to health and social care services.

The current contractual arrangements for Healthwatch Solihull began 1st July 2020 for a 5-

year period (3+1+1).

The contract value for Healthwatch Solihull is £155,322.30 per annum.

Every Local Authority in England has a Local Healthwatch. Collectively, Healthwatch form

a national network supported by Healthwatch England.

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Our Model and Delivery Structure

Our Statutory Functions

1. Function One: Gathering views and understanding the experiences of people who

use services, carers and the wider community

2. Function Two: Making people’s views known

3. Function Three: Promoting and supporting the involvement of people in the

commissioning and provision of local care services and how they are scrutinised

4. Function Four: Recommending investigation or special review of services via

Healthwatch England or directly to the Care Quality Commission (CQC)

5. Function Five: Providing information (signposting) about access to services and

support for making informed choices

6. Function Six: Making the views and experiences of people known to Healthwatch

England (and to other local Healthwatch organisations), and providing a steer to

help it carry out its role as national champion

7. Function Seven: NHS Complaints Advocacy (Referral to)

Delivering Outcomes for Solihull Citizens

Our delivery model is focused on delivering impact for Solihull citizens, demonstrated by

the changes we influence in health and social care. Our Business Plan for 2020 – 2023 can

be found as an attachment to this report. Through the delivery of our Business Plan we

aim for:

1. More citizens are aware of Healthwatch Solihull and have growing trust and

confidence in our work.

2. Increased levels of public involvement in our work.

3. More citizens, especially those most unlikely to be involved, have shared their

feedback with us about Solihull health and social care services.

4. More citizens access the right services at the right time through effective

information and signposting, including increased understanding of their rights and

responsibilities and where to turn when things go wrong or they have a complaint.

5. Provide challenge and support to the Solihull health and social care system so that

citizens are at the heart of decision making.

6. The voice of the citizen has an impact in the commissioning and improvement of

local health and social care services.

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Our Model

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Governance

In January 2021, we welcomed a new Chair for Healthwatch Solihull and Healthwatch

Birmingham. Richard Burden took over from Danielle Oum who stepped down in November

2020 to take up the Chair role at Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Trust.

Our Healthwatch board currently consists of eight members who work on a voluntary basis

to provide direction, oversight and scrutiny to our activities. Our board ensures that

decisions about priority areas of work reflect the concerns and interests of our diverse

local community. Through 2020/21 the board met four times and made decisions on

matters such as maximising our support for vulnerability throughout the pandemic and our

focus on inequalities.

We ensure wider public involvement in deciding our work priorities. We use a range of

tools to identify key themes and make decisions, we include our group of volunteers who

help us to engage with local community groups, as well as being part of large public

forums, and listening to what people tell us on our Information and Signposting line.

In January 2021, we recruited a Healthwatch Solihull Volunteer Representative to the

Board. Voted for and elected from the Healthwatch Solihull pool of volunteers, this role

enables the voice of Solihull volunteers to be heard at the highest level, influencing our

decisions and direction.

In November 2020, we aimed to recruit additional non-executive directors (NEDs) from

Solihull to join the Board. Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful in recruiting the calibre of

applicant required on this occasion. As a result, we have changed our approach to non-

executive recruitment and carried out a more targeted recruitment process. As a result

we are interviewing potential new Solihul NEDs in August 2021. We are focused on

ensuring the voice of Solihull residents in present at governance level.

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Staff Structure

As a result of the TUPE process we started the delivery of the Healthwatch Solihull

contract with 2 full-time members of staff, supported by a senior management team

covering the Solihull and Birmingham areas.

In the autumn 2020, we recruited new staff to the full compliment of 4.4 FTE staff

working on the Healthwatch Solihull Contract. The staff structure is as follows;

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Our Activity – Year 1 (July 2020 – June 2021)

Our Annual Report 2020-21

As per our statutory obligations, our annual report was published and shared with key

stakeholders by the 30th June 2021. This annual report covering the period April 2020 –

March 2021 can be found https://healthwatchsolihull.org.uk/wp-

content/uploads/2021/06/Annual-Report-Final-20-21.pdf .

The content of this report focuses on the achievements of our contractual year July 2020

to June 2021.

Engagement, Involvement and Reach

KPI Annual Target Actual

Reach – The number of individuals who have seen information about Healthwatch Solihull.

6000 399,000

Engagement – The number of individuals who have interacted with Healthwatch Solihull.

4500 10,000

The way we reach into the communities of Solihull and engage with citizens is central to

our work. Through the pandemic we worked hard to develop new ways of reaching

communities developing our skills to work online. This has been through social media and

virtual events.

Online engagement has become one of our real strengths with increasing connections

online and developing ways to engage individuals in our activities.

Key to our work moving forward is how we maintain our high-levels of online engagement

and compliment this with our face-to-face engagement activity.

Feedback Heard


Feedback Heard – Number of individual pieces of feedback about health and social care left with Healthwatch Solihull.

2000 2345

Throughout the year we developed our services to increase the amount of feedback we

heard about Health and Social care services. Despite the challenges of the pandemic and

https://healthwatchsolihull.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Annual-Report-Final-20-21.pdf

https://healthwatchsolihull.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Annual-Report-Final-20-21.pdf

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reduced access to health and social care services we successfully achieved our target

hearing a total of 2345 individual pieces of feedback.

This feedback heard was across a number of sources;

1) Online – social media and website contacts

2) Healthwatch Solihull Feedback Centre

3) Information and Signposting Services (Telephone and email)

4) Virtual Engagement Events

How we use this feedback and what individuals told us can be found in the Citizen voice

section of this report (page 12).

Marketing and Communications


Increased engagement with Digital Communication and Marketing

30% increase in followers across all channels

35% increase in followers across all Channels

Increased Website Traffic Baseline 8,211 36,412

Production of E-bulletin newsletters to promote Healthwatch Solihull.

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Increased contacts in our public mailing list

30% increase 115% Increase

Increased contacts in our Stakeholder Mailing Lists

30% increase 60% Increase

Regular Website News stories published

Weekly

Weekly news stories published on our website (more frequent for urgent

news)

More and more PR and Media content featuring Healthwatch Solihull.

4 (Quarterly)

3 local radio interviews 12 Press stories published

featuring Healthwatch Solihull (Birmingham Mail

and Solihull Updates) Local TV News – Midlands

Today

The majority of our communications and marketing activity this year took place through

online channels which fast became the main point of contact for communities during the

pandemic. In particular, we increased our presence through social media growing the

number of followers by 35% across all channels: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and

YouTube.

Access to relevant and timely updates and news was important to Solihull citizens through

the pandemic. To support this, we published weekly news stories to ensure our website

was up to date with all relevant sources of information. This increased our website traffic

throughout the year resulting in a 440% increase in website traffic for 20-21 compared to

19-20.

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We were delighted to see an increased media interest in our work and have developed

good relationships with the press resulting in a number of online articles, radio

appearances and TV news items featuring Healthwatch Solihull.

To ensure we keep citizens and stakeholders up to date with our activities we developed a

monthly e-bulletin which was distributed to an increasing mailing list of stakeholders and

the public. This e-bulletin shared key information, celebrated our achievements and

advertised ways to be involved and leave feedback.

Community Engagement

Our community engagement activity throughout the pandemic has been online. We have

built strong ways of engaging individuals through social media with Healthwatch Solihull

being a regular contributor to targeted Facebook groups across Solihull. We also developed

the technology to hold virtual engagement meetings and events.

In May 2021, we pulled all our online engagement routes together as part of a Prize Draw

incentive scheme. Everyone who left feedback with Healthwatch Solihull during the month

of May was entered into the draw to win a £50 voucher for a local Solihull business. In

part, this was to support local Solihull businesses reopening after the winter lockdown

period. This initiative achieved an increase in feedback being left with Healthwatch

Solihull in this month.

Throughout the pandemic we were conscious that the online world was not for everyone

and wanted to reach out to those who were digitally excluded during this time. We did

this through a number of initiatives:

1) Increased relationships with our partners in the Voluntary, community and social

enterprise sector

2) Increased printed material – leaflets with food banks, posters distributed through

housing partners and leaflets distributed in the vaccination centres.

3) Increased relationships with Care Homes – by working with Solihull care homes we

developed ways to communicate and hear the feedback from care home residents

this included virtual visits with residents and/or telephone calls.

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Citizen Voice

Early in the pandemic, we heard from people about the lack of clear and often inaccurate

information. Because of this our role became much more focused on providing people with

clear, consistent advice and information to help address people’s concerns.

The key questions people asked included:

• When will I receive my vaccine invitation?

• When will GPs be offering face-to-face appointments?

• How can I find an NHS dentist who is offering appointments?

• When will my cancer treatment resume?

This insight into people’s access to the care they need and effective communication is

especially valuable now that the NHS is moving into the restoration and recovery of

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services. There is a high level of concern about the number of people whose treatments

have been delayed due to the pandemic, many with serious conditions such as cancer.

Early in the pandemic one lady told us: “without his treatment plan he won’t survive,

why are people with cancer being ignored?”

This is particularly the case at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust

(UHB), which has been the NHS Trust most severely impacted by the pandemic in the

country. Following a Care Quality Commission (CQC) report highlighting serious concerns

about patient safety at UHB, we pressed the Trust’s senior management to urgently

address the issues raised. We have also sought answers around UHB’s performance on

cancer waiting times before the pandemic, alongside its actions to tackle the current

backlog of treatments.

We are actively supporting UHB in this task by working with the Trust to ensure

communications with patients on waiting lists are clear, sensitive and appropriate for

people’s needs.

Information and Signposting


Number of individuals receiving Information and Signposting support via telephone, online and face-to-face.

250 268

Number of individuals accessing our Information and Signposting pages on the Website

250 271

Never before has our information and signposting function been so important. With the

pandemic and the closing of services individuals needed access to the right information in

a timely-manner. We worked hard to stay on top of all the changes across health and

social care to ensure we provided individuals with the correct information.

At the start of the pandemic the majority of our contacts focused on ensuring individuals

had access to the resources they needed: food, medication, mental health support and

shielding information. As the pandemic moved forward this shifted to providing individuals

with information about access health and social care services: GPs, Dentists and hospital

treatment.

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Influence and Impact

Investigation and Follow-up Reports


Number of Investigation reports Published

2 2

Follow-up Impact Reports 2 2

Summary of Impact as a result of our work

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Investigation Case Study – People’s experiences of access GP services Via Technology.

People being able to get an appointment with a GP has been a priority for Healthwatch Solihull.

Over the last year, we have frequently been told about the difficulty of accessing GP services via technology (by

telephone, website, app or video call).

The Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically reduced the number of face-to-face appointments and interactions at

general practice premises. It was therefore important for us to hear and report Solihull residents’ experiences

of accessing and having consultations via technology.

An online survey was completed in November 2020 by residents (16+ years old) who are registered to a general

practice in Solihull. It included an invitation for people to share their experiences verbally with us. We

advertised the survey with the help of local Solihull organisations, and by sharing it in meetings with health and

social care providers.

Thanks to patients sharing their experiences we were able to identify key issues and engage with Primary

Care Networks (PCNs) in Solihull to implement changes.

The main findings of our report identified that, whilst the public understands the necessity of the use of

telephone and video call consultations in addition to face-to-face appointments, there are still concerns.

We heard through our survey that 57% of our respondents found accessing technology-based services ‘very

difficult’ or ‘difficult’.

Respondents experienced problems during telephone and video consultations due to issues like the lack of

visual cues that cannot conveyed via telephone consultations or issues with understanding healthcare

professionals’ tone of voice or accent on the telephone. 86% of respondents did not have an option to choose

between having telephone appointments or video call appointments.

The issue surrounding insufficient GP telephone lines was a common issue for respondents. Patients

emphasised that they are working, or have other tasks, that may not allow them to wait more than an hour on

the telephone. It was therefore often problematic that general practices do not give specific times or periods

for telephone consultations/appointment. Respondents also had fears about confidentiality related to the use

of technology.

In response to the report the PCNs acknowledged the need for clearer explanations on access via technology,

including;

• The need to improve website information and accessibility.

• The plurality of options to access surgeries to support people with constraints, such as; work, caring

responsibilities, disabilities, language barriers, etc.

• How to access face-to-face consultations if technology is a barrier.

• Clarity about telephone call-back times (and whether it is acceptable for patients to use their phones

whilst awaiting a call).

• Processes around missed calls and if practices will phone again and how many times.

• The confidentiality of digital tools.

We have also been working closely with Birmingham and Solihull CCG around the findings of this report to

support PCNs to make the changes needed.

Read our full report https://healthwatchsolihull.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/HWS-GP-Access-June-

2021.pdf

https://healthwatchsolihull.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/HWS-GP-Access-June-2021.pdf

https://healthwatchsolihull.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/HWS-GP-Access-June-2021.pdf

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Volunteering


Number of Active volunteers

10 12

This has been a challenging year for our volunteers, who have not been able to be as

active in their communities as they normally would be. It has been essential throughout

the pandemic for us to support our volunteers as much as possible. Either through

volunteering with Healthwatch Solihull or supporting them to be active supporting

individuals in their local communities.

Through regular meetings and engagement sessions with volunteers we have kept our

volunteers active, helping us to be innovative in the ways we engage with citizens. This

year our volunteers:

• Provided support on our GP access project by testing out surveys and providing

input when deciding the research topic.

• Took part in mystery shopping and online feedback gathering.

• Represented the voices of Solihull residents and volunteers at virtual Board

meetings.

• Continued to support Healthwatch Solihull from home by attending virtual

meetings and assisting with projects.

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Priorities for 2021-22

The past year has been extremely testing for Solihull. Health and social care services have

worked tirelessly under unprecedented pressure to care for citizens during the pandemic,

and we at Healthwatch Solihull have done our utmost to support the fight against Covid-

19. Yet while the vaccine programme offers hope, the challenges that remain mean there

is no time to rest.

In the immediate term, there is the task of keeping Covid-19 in retreat while

simultaneously getting people whose care has been disrupted treated as quickly as

possible. But these urgent priorities must not divert attention away from the long-term

effort to combat the health inequalities that meant Covid-19 had such a disproportionate

impact on Solihull’s most vulnerable communities.

Andy Cave, CEO

We aim to make the effective use of patient and public experience, insight and

involvement central to the restoration and recovery of services. There are already

profound changes underway in how care is accessed and provided, and it is essential that

no-one’s needs are overlooked.

The restoration and recovery of services offers opportunities as well as challenges. The

new Birmingham and Solihull Integrated Care System, with NHS, local authority and other

services working more closely together in the community, have the potential to

significantly improve health outcomes and reduce inequalities. Healthwatch Solihull will

champion Solihull to have an equal footing and voice as part of the Birmingham and

Solihull system.

Integrated Care Systems are designed to accommodate the specific needs of different

communities, something particularly important somewhere as diverse as Solihull. Solihull

is rightly proud of this diversity, yet many communities have suffered worse than others,

both before and during the pandemic. Care Home residents, bereaved men and multi faith

communities were just some of the communities we engaged with during lockdown, and

we will continue to reach out across the borough to understand and evidence where

inequality exists. The feedback we hear will provide support and challenge to health and

social care services so the needs of individuals from every background are considered in

plans to reduce inequality, and that everyone can access the best possible care for them.

Healthwatch Solihull is dedicated to three areas of work in the coming year (21-22):

1. Restoration and Recovery – ensuring patients are supported, communicated with

and prioritised fairly.

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2. Tackling Inequality – ensuring that those who are most likely to experience

inequality are at the heart of decisions and have their voice heard.

3. Championing Patients in the development of the Birmingham and Solihull

Integrated Care System.

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