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Hi Hannah.
So pleased to meet you. I'm Sarah Wren and I'm chairman of the new Healthwatch Hertfordshire.
Very pleased to meet you. My name's Anna Bradley and I'm the Chair of Healthwatch England.
Anna, it's exciting times for Healthwatch.
Now obviously you launched officially on the first of October.
How's it been so far ?
There's
so many people who have some kind of stake in Healthwatch England
so it's been extremely busy, whether that's been about getting to know
the
national policy makers and regulators and others, or
trying to get out and meet with more of both the
old links and the emerging Healthwatch,
or, indeed, as we have most recently, been talking to their national, third sector
organisations, who are critical to us being able to do our job properly.
It's been a whirl of
meeting different people,
but very exciting.
Excellent. So have you got to the point where you can say now
what the priorities are going to be for Healthwatch England?
Well I think there are some that are kind of inevitable and
'must do'. We have to set up an organization. Like you, we are starting
from scratch so,
and i'm hoping, very soon, to be able to announce the appointment of a Chief Exec. We've
appointed some of the more junior staff.
The Chief exec will then need to appoint the senior staff so
there's a setup job,
and that's really important. There's the piece I was just talking about- the kind of
building the right kind of relationships with key players
and, i suppose, especially important there building the right kind of relationships
with people like the C.Q.C, the Commissioning Board, the Local Government Association
because we are going to sometimes have to say some
difficult things, as well as some
, I hope, helpful things, to some of those organizations, so building the right platform,
the right kind of relationship is
going to be enormously important, so lots of that.
We've also, of course, got a critical role, not an accident, we've set up six
months before local Healthwatch to lead, build, and support local Healthwatch
as it emerges over this next period,
and provide what you the might need to get up and running as fast as possible.
So we're very focused on that.
And then there's going to be some events, most noticeably
probably Francis and
Winterbourne, and possibly other things that we're going to have to deal with.
The final thing is that we need to pick on a small number of things that
we want to, if you like, be famous for
improving
over the course of the next period. And that's what my newly formed
committee is starting to discuss,
and will be meeting, talking about it at our next meeting on December the fifth.
Well that all sounds very exciting. Now obviously I come from a local Heathwatch level,
so i'm particularly interested in what Healthwatch England
is going to have as it's priorities
with regards to local Healthwatch.
In one respect I could turn this entirely on it's head and say well you tell me,
because that's what we've been trying to do. So we've been talking to
old Links and emerging Healthwatch for sometime now
asking what people would find most helpful and that's what we should be
focusing on, what people would find most helpful. Some of the things that we've
been told and already developing are, well first of all the brand, which
was launched and which is available to all local Heathwatch and shared
by all of us, I hope.
And joined up with that, lots of thinking about how that brand can be
used, the name could be used, to build awareness of Healthwatch
generally.
There is,
in development, a web in a box that you could kind of take, unpack
and fill with your own stuff if you wanted to. So just some things that
make it easier for organizations to get up and running. There's a thing called
Healthwatch hub, which is a place where we can share information up, down
and all across the network.
And then there's some more specifics which we've been told would be
helpful. Whether that's about some guidance on good governance, or some
guidance on 'Enter and View', which is one of the things which
some local Healthwatch groups have said they're particularly uncertain about
how best to take advantage of,
so we're preparing some guidance on that kind of thing.
But this list is going to a grow, continue to grow and change.
It's gonna be a
tooing and froing between us.
So how do you think the Healthwatch network is really going to work together then?
It has to be by desire,
not command. We've been
given a very particular kind of organization. It is, what i think, is
right called a network.
But there is no command and control, either
from local Healthwatch up to Healthwatch England, or vice versa.
So to make this work we all have to see
that working together we can do more. Most importantly,
we can do more for consumers and users of health and social care.
And I hope
that we
will be able to show, quite soon, for local Healthwatch,
that we can help you to do your job better
and that you can help us to do our job better by providing us with
information and intelligence from the front line, from which we're quite removed,
so that, together, we are more than the sum of the parts really.
Fantastic.
So tell me about
your emerging local Healthwatch. You're named, you are the Chair,
you're ahead of the field, how does it feel?
Well it feels great.
I must admit I'm very relieved that we are already progressing fairly well
because the first of April is going to come round incredibly quickly and we want to be able
to really hit the ground running.
I must admit, though, there are some issues that are really
engaging us at the moment, but i think that they're the issues that you'd have always at the
start of any new organization.
So for us it's going through all of the operational issues, the setting up
a new business,
we're now incorporated, so I am the Chairman, and we now have a Chief Executive, which is
fantastic. But now we've got to look at the other staff we're going to need to
appoint.
We've got to get our charitable status.
We've got to appoint the rest of our board, and our stakeholder panel, and then
see how we are going to work with local people. Now, for us, it's very important
that we also use the very good things that have been done by our Link
locally.
So we want to see how we can use the good and take it from the past
and really use that legacy really.
Erm.
So we are extremely busy as
you know - i'm sure you are - we have too few hands to do too much work,
but we are finding that this is really establishing good relationships
across the county.
We are also spending a lot of time meeting
key players locally, and looking at how the relationships are going to work, how
we're going to be able to really be the consumer champion, and the public
voice, to really improve health and social care across Hertfordshire.
It's remarkable hearing you
talk how common the challenges are to local Healthwatch and Healthwatch England, and really,
that's not surprising, we're doing the same thing just in slightly different
places.
But it's good to hear you're not on your own, and that
other people are facing the same kind of challenges.
So what do you think you can do to help us locally ? Obviously I've
mentioned the issues of setting up a business, but also, of course, we've got
to become far more rigorous in our data collection,
ensure the reliability and validity of local data.
What you think you can do centrally to help us with that? I mean i think this
is one of the things that we really have common cause in, is making sure that what we
do is, all of us, is really solidly based in evidence,
because I don't think you can arrive at the local Health and Well-Being Board, any more than you can arrive
at a meeting with the N.H.S Commissioning Board, or a Minister, and say we think you
should change this, but whoops, I haven't got any evidence to support it.
You've got to have that case in order to win the arguments.
So,
so we will obviously have here, at Healthwatch England,
some of the skills which that we need in order to be able to
drawn on the evidence which the intelligence and information which you
have at local Healthwatch level, and kind of
pull it all together and
turn it into something which presents more of a national picture.
I'm expecting that we will want,
you will want to have that kind of fed back so we can say well actually yeah,
the issue that you've identified here it's shared by another
fifty local Healthwatch groups, and here's who they are, and you might want to talk
to them,
that we can share that kind of good practice also.
But if there's a demand from local Healthwatch... for help with
building that kind of information capacity, especially in the early
years of local Healthwatch development, then
that's one of the things we will certainly take away and think about
how we could best
support. Great.
What do you think your
priorities are going to be at a local level?
Well like you, and your board, we're really starting to look at that
now,
and it's really, i think, a very difficult thing to to get right. So we are
spending a little bit of time labouring over this. Now,
of course, we are going to have lots of different things that will inform us.
We are going to have the joint strategic needs assessment, that's going to have
a lot of useful data.
We've got a lot of other ways of collecting data locally, particularly from the
wealth of community and voluntary
organizations in Hertfordshire,
that themselves have a wealth of resource that will help to inform us.
But also we do need to look at the national perspective, we need to look at
our health and well-being strategy, and ensure that what we do is
actually the right thing for Hertfordshire.
We are aware that perhaps, in the past
there have sometimes being very vocal people, quite rightly with particular agenda.
Now those things may be things that we need to you look into, however they may not be
the appropriate things for our overall strategy and our strategic
priorities. So, it's a work-in-progress, but we are going to get there by April the first.
Same kind of challenges that we have here, and i guess one of the things that we
are thinking about as a committee is,
how we make those difficult choices,
and whether there are some criteria that we can adopt which would help us
to choose which things that we should really work on, and
gives some explanation to people about why we've chosen those on this occasion
for the next year or two.
And those criteria, and our first sense of what our priorities should be, the kinds of things that we
hope to share in some regional meetings with local Healthwatch in
through
the spring,
planning for regional events, and then a national conference, which i hope will
give that opportunity to have a kind of sharing, a two-way sharing of
thinking about priorities. Both ours and yours, because I think
that there needs to be some synergy there.
We want to make something a priority, but we have no
intelligence from local Healthwatch in those area it won't be as
successful as it might otherwise be. So,
so
feeling very
positive about those opportunities to meet
all your colleagues,
many of them for the first time.
Well, if I could just sort of mention one last thing that would be really useful for us,
we are very concerned that we need to become a household name.
However, we are, you know, of course, as a small organization,
really trying to do that with very few resources.
So certainly, if you could support us in really getting the message out
of what Healthwatch is, and how a local Healthwatch can really engage with
people, that would be fantastic for us at a local level.
Very much on our minds, i'm glad to say, so following the launch of the
name, the logo and so on, one of the things that the team here are putting
together is
our whole set of thoughts about how that name could be used and how
PR
and other work can be done by local Healthwatch in
each of your own areas,
spreading the news about
Healthwatch, and what it does. We'll obviously be doing that at national level. I think
one of the great strengths of this network is that everytime you get
the name of Herts Healthwatch in your local papers it
will kind of raise awareness of the brand in the same way as
when we, at Healthwatch England, are covered in one of the
national media. And i think there's a huge advantage here by
all of us spreading the word about our name and our task. I think we
will collectively, I hope, manage to raise awareness of who we are, and
why we're here, and what we'll do for people. The test of that will be, of course,
the levels of awareness,
so
one of the things we are
busy doing moment is trying to establish a baseline for that. How many
people know about Healthwatch now? Probably no-one, but that's to be
expected. But we need to be quite ambitious, I think, about how many people
we want to know about Healthwatch at the end of the first year, and at the end of
the second year end.
We are going to have to work quite hard, all of us on that, together.
Can I just thank you, it's been absolutely fascinating talking to you, and to hear what's
happening at a Healthwatch England level.
I mean, like you, I'm really excited about what's going on nationally, I think
we've got a fantastic opportunity
to get all sorts of organizations working together,
and to really be able to challenge health and social care
across England to make sure that we really do provide the level of care
which every individual in this country should expect.
So thank you for your time and we all really look forward to working with you.
Well thank you very much and I, with you, I think, as you say, a really exciting
opportunity to make things better for people.
So lovely to meet, and hope to meet you and many more of your colleagues very soon.