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Agenda item

Agenda item

HEALTHWATCH LEICESTER CITY ANNUAL REPORT

To receive the Healthwatch Leicester City Annual Report 2017 and to receive an update from Healthwatch Leicester and Leicestershire on recent arrangements that have been put in place since the contract was awarded to Engaging Communities Staffordshire.

Minutes:

The Board received the Healthwatch Leicester City Annual Report 2017 and an update from Healthwatch Leicester and Leicestershire on recent arrangements that have been put in place since the contract was awarded to Engaging Communities Staffordshire.

 

Harsha Kotecha (Chair Healthwatch Advisory Board) and Michal Smith (Healthwatch Manager), Healthwatch Leicester and Leicestershire attended the meeting to present the Annual Report and to provide an update on local Healthwatch arrangements since Engaging Communities Staffordshire had been awarded the contract for Leicester and Leicestershire. 

 

It was noted that Engaging Communities Staffordshire (ECS) hosted a number of Healthwatch contracts across the East and West Midlands areas as well as some in in the north.  This enabled them to offer a level of consistency and substantial support for research for overseeing local health services.

 

Governance arrangements were overseen by the ECS Board and there was a local Advisory Board for Leicester and Leicestershire which determined local priorities.  4 members had now been appointed to the Advisory Board in addition to the Chair and they were in the process of going through an induction process on their role and determining an interim work programme involving 3 priorities.  1 for the city area, 1 for the country area and 1 for Better Care Together.  The city and county priorities were aligned around GP access and the emerging out of hours service which was better and more advanced in the city and was emerging in the East and West Leicestershire CCG areas.  The public were being engaged for their views on how they saw the service changing and the shift from patients seeing a GP for all consultations and moving to more consultations with other health care professionals.

 

Healthwatch were also looking at maternity services under the STP initiative in relation to the centralisation of the maternity services in Leicester and the closure of the birthing unit at Melton Mowbray.  Healthwatch were also working with the Better Births Programme within Leicester Leicestershire and Rutland area around the 5 year forward programme on maternity services and how they would change in the future.

 

Following the completion of the process of staff transferring from Healthwatch Leicester and VAL to Leicester and Leicestershire Healthwatch, ECS had a surplus of TUPE funding which they had now used to provide an extra member of staff with a focus on volunteering, volunteering recruitment and volunteer support as well as supporting the outreach who go into the community to gather the public and patient experience of local health and social care services.

 

The Chair thanked previous Healthwatch staff that had provided services to the Board and had represented the patients and public in the city on health and social care issues.  The Chair was particularly interested in the local governance issues and how the new arrangements would be robust in bringing forward the voice of patients and the public and how these were fed into the Board’s deliberations.

 

Michael commented that were already having conversations with key stakeholders in the health and social care environment to see how the patient voice can be fed into the process so that the Board can hear the views of the public and patients and the larger voluntary sector as Healthwatch also represented the groups that represented individuals as well

 

RESOLVED:

 

That the representatives of Leicester and Leicestershire Healthwatch be thanked for presenting the Annual Report and the update of the new local arrangements and priorities.

Supporting documents: