News and reports

Healthwatch North Somerset assisted in leading a workshop at the Dementia Challenge Conference at the Winter Gardens on 3rd November 2014 entitled Valuing Your Voice – Improving Local Services.

Our Annual General Meeting was held on Wednesday 1st October 2014 at Nailsea Methodist Church

The inspections – which are carried out by a mixture of inspectors, clinicians, and experts by experience – will assess whether the service overall is: safe, effective, caring, responsive to people’s needs and well-led.

Weston General Hospital is due to be inspected by the CQC between January and March 2015.

The hospital discharge process has become a topic that requires attention in North Somerset, and across the country.

With the internet rapidly becoming an essential resource in most households, websites are of growing importance to our everyday lives.

To contribute to the special enquiry, Healthwatch North Somerset chose to seek the views of service users at a local drop in centre for the homeless and vulnerably housed.

We are pleased to announce that our annual report for the year 2013 / 2014 is now published

Access to, & the services provided by GP practices in North Somerset are important issues for the public. As a primary care service, GP practices are the health service that the majority of the population access on an ongoing basis.

Mental health is high on the agenda of both Healthwatch North Somerset and Healthwatch England. The picture locally is not a pretty one, and as an organisation, Healthwatch North Somerset has received details of a number of issues from the public.

We collect information from the public about their experiences of local health and social care services. This information is shared with health and social care service providers, local commissioners and all other relevant bodies.

Personalisation is relatively new, is not fully understood and is of interest to the public. It is a social care approach in which every person who receives support, whether provided by statutory services or self-funded, has choice and control.