2. Hospitals – Dissatisfaction with the service at hospitals – both inpatients and outpatients (16% of all feedback received in January to June 2023).
3. Dentists – Accessing NHS dentists (14% of all feedback received during January to June 2023).
Read more in our mid-year report for January to June 2023.
Our latest annual report highlights the work we have done over the past 12 months in Northumberland, to engage with communities and where we have worked with commissioners and providers to highlight key issues. This year over 1900 people shared their experiences of health and social care services with us, helping to raise awareness of issues and improve care. Almost 5000 people came to us for clear advice and information about topics such as mental health and the cost of living crisis.
Services can’t make improvements without hearing your views. That’s why over the last year we have made listening to feedback from all areas of the community a priority. This allows us to understand the full picture, and feed this back to services and help them improve. Read the report to find out more about how we’ve listened to the experiences of local people, including our work with families to see if NHS mental health services were working for autistic children and young people, how we’ve kept the lack of NHS dentistry provision high on decision makers agendas, and what we heard from people in Cramlington about how the closure of a 100-hour pharmacy will affect them.
Over the past year we have worked hard to make sure we hear from everyone within our county. We think it’s important to reach out to the communities we hear from less frequently, to gather their feedback, make sure their voice is heard and that services meet their needs. This year we have reached different communities by:
Our Signposting and Information Service provides confidential support and free information to help you understand your options and get the help you need. Whether it’s finding a GP surgery, how to make a complaint or choosing a good care home for a loved one – you can count on us. This year we’ve helped people by:
In the ten years since Healthwatch was launched, we’ve demonstrated the power of public feedback in helping the health and care system understand what is working, spot issues and think about how things can be better in the future. Services are currently facing unprecedented challenges and tackling the backlog needs to be a key priority for the NHS to ensure everyone gets the care they need. Over the next year we will continue our role in collecting feedback from everyone in our local community and giving them a voice to help shape improvements to services. We will also continue our work to tackle inequalities that exist and work to reduce the barriers you face when accessing care.
View the Healthwatch Northumberland Annual report 2022-23
Thursday 27 July, 10am – 11am via Zoom
Please join us for our next online forum for those with family or friends living in care homes in Northumberland.
Are you a relative of someone who lives in a care home, or have you recently helped a loved one access respite within a care home? Would you like support or information from others who have shared similar experiences? Come along to our next care homes forum to share your feedback or simply come along to find out more.
We will also give an update on our ‘look and listen’ visits into care homes.
To register for a space or give feedback outside the forum please email: info@healthwatchnorthumberland.co.uk or call us on 03332 408468.
Join us for our next free online lunchtime event on Friday 14 July, 1pm-2pm.
We will hear from Dr Charles Shepherd, Hon. Medical Adviser at the ME Association, who will talk to us about Long Covid and the similarities with ME/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
He will explain what is known about the condition and discuss the best approach to managing the symptoms. He will also talk about how functional ability and quality of life might be improved.
There will be a chance to ask questions.
Register now and we will send you a link to join closer to the event.
If you would like to tell us about your experience of Long Covid and the health and care services you have used, please get in touch.
This event has now passed
Our strategic plan sets out what we want to do over the next three years, as identified by our board.
Health and social care are vital parts of many people’s day to day lives. Many of us are passionate about the NHS and social care because we, or a loved one, are using a service right now. At some point, though, it is likely that every one of us will need support or treatment.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic we were working in a period of major change in health and social care and their delivery mechanisms. The pandemic and the response to it have increased the challenges that relate to demographic, economic and environmental factors and we need to take all of these into consideration when developing our strategy and planning our work.
Healthwatch Northumberland voices people’s concerns and provides feedback to service providers and commissioners. By engaging directly with users of the service and their carers we collect vital data on how and why people us e services in their area.
The potential scope of our work is vast as it covers health and social care services for all adults, children and young people in Northumberland with particular reference to those who are most vulnerable or may be excluded. This means we must prioritise the issues we focus on.
We have three strategic aims which are the themes for our work over the lifetime of the strategy. Our work each year will be identified as meeting one or more of the aims.
Health
With the help of Healthwatch Northumberland, the views, knowledge and experiences of a health service users and carers, particularly those less often heard, are listened to, and have a positive influence on changes and developments in health services in Northumberland.
Social care
With the help of Healthwatch Northumberland, the views, knowledge and experiences of a social care service users and carers, particularly those less often heard, are listened to, and have a positive influence on changes and developments in social care services in Northumberland.
Promotion
Healthwatch Northumberland is used by people in the county as a trusted source of information and signposting to health and social care services. Service providers, commissioners and key stakeholders in Northumberland and the wider care system know, trust and actively engage with Healthwatch Northumberland.
The activities and projects we do will change each year and will be set out in an Operational Plan as Strategic Objectives. These provide the framework for specific activities in the Operational Plan and delivered through our core activities of Engagement and Insight, Communications, Volunteering and Strategic Influence.
During May you told us about the difficulties you were having ordering and getting hold of prescription medicine. We also heard from a number of people that they were still having issues booking a GP appointment. Poor service in local hospitals was another theme from feedback this month.
This month we spent time listening to customers of Lloyds Pharmacy in Sainsbury’s Cramlington, about the impact of the planned closure of the pharmacy this summer. We visited the pharmacy, which is the only 100 hours per week pharmacy in Cramlington, at different times of the day and week, to speak to customers and the wider community, to see what effect the closure would have on local people and other pharmacies in the area. We also provided an online feedback form and heard from 230 people.
As well as our regular Here to Hear drop-in sessions in Berwick, Blyth, Prudhoe, Morpeth and Bedlington, we attended events which included Prudhoe Health Week, the Fishermen’s Mission SeaFit event in Amble and the Choppington Disability Group monthly session.
Read our short report below to find out more.
In Northumberland, as across England as a whole, growing numbers of people are living with sight loss or impairment. This is likely to increase further as people live longer since a good deal of vision impairment is related to the ageing process. The estimated number of people living with sight loss in Northumberland is 13,500 (4% of the county’s population) which is higher than the national average and this is estimated to rise to 5% of the county’s population by 2032.
Consequently, vision rehabilitation services are considered key to prevention, supporting independence, and reducing demand for health and social care services.
The total estimated indirect cost of sight loss in Northumberland is over £32million. In 2020-2021 people in Northumberland living with sight loss and a wider audience told Vision Northumberland that some people in the county experience unfair barriers to accessing registration and low vision/rehabilitation services, that the eye care pathway in Northumberland was flawed, and that people did not know what services were available to them.
People stressed the importance of:
This report, funded by Healthwatch Northumberland, follows up on that work asking the key questions:
What challenges do people with sight loss in Northumberland experience when accessing registration and low vision/rehabilitation services as outlined in the Care Act 2014?
Does the eye care pathway really work in Northumberland and how could it be improved?
Join us for our next online lunchtime event on Friday 9 June, 1pm-2pm. Ruth Smith, Engagement & Events Coordinator for Arthritis Action, will be joining us to talk about arthritis, self-management and resources for people living with the condition.
She will cover topics including pain management, diet and keeping active for those who may be new to exercise but want some tips on how to start.
This session is suitable for people who live or work in Northumberland and are living with or working with any form of arthritis, including osteoarthritis, inflammatory arthritis and gout. The presentation may also be useful for those with other conditions causing joint pain such as fibromyalgia.
There will be a chance to ask questions.
Register now and we will send you a link to join closer to the event.
If you would like more information or would like to tell us about health or social care services you have used please get in touch.
This event has now passed
We heard from local families that some NHS mental health services aren’t working for their autistic children. To get a better picture of what is happening we asked people living in Northumberland to tell us about their experiences of mental health services including what is working well and what could be better. We heard from parents and carers of children and young people with a formal autism diagnosis or currently being assessed, or where there is an indication of autism. We asked for feedback on the different services that families were involved with such as school nursing, Children and Young People Service (CYPS), Primary Mental Health Work Service (PMHW), Universal Crisis Team (UCT), and any other services with which they may have been in contact.
We worked with parents and carers to create our feedback form to make sure the information we were asking for was appropriate and gave enough opportunity to provide relevant feedback on the services. Thank you to everyone who shared their views and experiences with us and helped to promote this piece of work.
We are aware there are issues not only in Northumberland but also nationally with recruitment and retention of staff across the health and social care sector as a whole, and we appreciate that the feedback should be considered within this wider context.
This report is an overview of out findings and key recommendations on the issues raised by parents and carers of autistic children and young people who live in Northumberland and use, or have used, NHS mental health or autism diagnosis services.
We are your local health and social care champion. We’re here to make sure your views on NHS and social care services in Northumberland are heard.
