Healthwatch: The new body overseeing the NHS

As part of the realisation of these aims, the Health and Social Care Act 2012 contains a duty for all local authorities to ensure that there is a local Healthwatch organisation in their area, substantially increasing the public power base to influence local healthcare decisions for both healthcare commissioning and healthcare service provision.  In this article we set out to summarise the local Healthwatch vision, aims and values.

 

 

The intention is for local Healthwatch organisations to be an effective, powerful, representative and independent local public and patient voice for all aspects of health and social care services within a community.  The local Healthwatch bodies will act to support local views in influencing national policy and practice through Healthwatch England. 

 

 

1. Influence the planning and delivery of health and social care services

 

Healthwatch will maintain ongoing proactive engagement with all sections of the local population so that the community’s views are appropriately represented.  This role will involve scrutinising quality of local service provision, providing assistance to commissioners in evaluating services and ensuring local views are expressed and acted upon through local health and wellbeing boards as seat holding members. 

 

2. Provide advice and information to help people access health and social care services and support and make informed choices

 

Healthwatch organisations will maintain up to date knowledge on local health and social care provision, providing advice and information to help enable all sections of the local population to access health and social care services which are relevant to them.  They will also interact with local health and social care providers so that local people gain access to the organisations which can best assist and support them.

 

3. Hold commissioners and service providers to account

 

The aim of local Healthwatch is to champion quality in all sectors of local health and social care provision and ensure commissioners deliver on patient and public centred care. They will seek to achieve this by evaluating existing health and social care services and making recommendations to commissioners and service providers on improvements, changes and best practice.  They will have an ongoing dialogue with commissioners and providers in response to particular concerns or issues raised and will monitor actions taken to address concerns.  Additionally, they may escalate issues to Healthwatch England and/ or the Care Quality Commission if they have on-going or serious concerns relating to specific service providers.

 

 

To be successful a local Healthwatch organisation will need to proactively reach out to the local community using methods that are inclusive and accessible to all groups including adults, children and young people, minorities, carers, specific patient groups and people living in rural communities.  They should also work on developing strong relationships with key stakeholders such as Clinical Commissioning Groups and the GP community. 

 

Local Healthwatch organisations will have real impact if they work in collaboration with relevant partners to promote the benefits of preventative services and early intervention. They will also need to continuously promote their role and functions so that they become a highly visible agency both to the public and within the health and social care community.  As part of this local Healthwatch organisations should work to reflect the issues which are of particular concern to their local residents, for example establishing committees or working groups to consider local maternity services in the face of a proposed change to the service provision. 

 

 

Key behaviours local Healthwatch organisations should be able to demonstrate in order to successfully fulfill their role include awareness of the local and national health and social care landscape as well as of equality issues and in particular the Public Sector Equality Duty.  They will need to be effective representatives of patients’ views to their local Health and Wellbeing Board, able to provide constructive challenge where appropriate.

 

It will be tough for local Healthwatch organisations to get to grips with their roles and responsibilities in the early days but they have now been given “licence to print” putting the interests of patients first.

 

 

To date, the government has been deliberately silent about a preferred organisational model for local Healthwatch organisations focussing instead on their functions and responsibilities. For local Healthwatch organisations to fulfil these functions and responsibilities they will need to be independent corporate bodies, transparent in structure and management, able to employ staff, involve volunteers and provide an annual report and set of accounts to the public. 

 

In the Health and Social Care Act 2012, which provides the legislative basis for the establishment of local Healthwatch organisations, one of the requirements is that local Healthwatch organisations are established as “social enterprises”.  The legislative definition of a social enterprise refers to a body which might reasonably be considered to act “for the benefit of the community”.  (The full definition is available in the NHS Bodies and Local Authorities (Partnership Arrangements, Care Trusts, Public Health and Local Healthwatch Regulations 2012 which were laid before Parliament in December 2012). 

 

Social enterprises which fit within the existing definition can take a variety of legal forms depending on their particular requirements, including:

 

• Companies limited by shares or by guarantee 

• Community Interest Companies 

• Industrial and Provident Societies (community benefit societies or co-operative societies)

• Charitable Incorporated Organisations

  (Some of these legal forms may also provide eligibility for charitable status)