Healthwatch Kingston upon Hull is the independent consumer champion for the community. It influences all local health and social care services.
Healthwatch's role is to enable local people to monitor the standards of provision of local care services. It wants them to be able to decide whether and how local care services could and ought to be improved. Healthwatch Hull gives people a voice to help improve the design of services. This is as well as helping to make the right choices about the services they receive.
Healthwatch can help you get the best out of local health and care services by -
- listening to your views about local services and making sure these are taken into account when services are planned and delivered
- providing information about local services to make sure you know how to access the help you need
- signposting you to independent complaints advocacy if you need support to complain about a service you've received
Healthwatch Hull can -
- collect the views of patients and service users
- send trained representatives to go into health and social care premises. This is to see and hear how services are provided
- report findings and associated recommendations - good and bad - to providers like -
- the Care Quality Commission
- the local authority
- NHS commissioners
- Healthwatch England
- the national body for local Healthwatch
- have a representative on the Health and Wellbeing Board. This is the body that oversees health and social care in Hull