Building better hospital facilities with Healthwatch Together
Date posted: 25th June 2021
The New Hospitals Programme and Healthwatch Together team up to speak to local communities about proposals for new hospital facilities.
The New Hospitals Programme is pleased to be partnering with Healthwatch Together (opens in new window) to gather more feedback about our once-in-a-generation opportunity to build brand new hospital facilities in Lancashire and South Cumbria. Anyone can take part in the conversation about the future of healthcare facilities and Healthwatch Together will connect programme leaders with local communities, including some of our hardest to reach groups, to gather important views, concerns and wishes.
What is Healthwatch?
Healthwatch is the independent national champion for people who use health and social care services. Its role is to find out what matters to people and make sure their views shape the support they need.
There is a local Healthwatch in every area of England. The New Hospitals Programme will be working with the Healthwatch teams serving the Blackpool, Blackburn and Darwen, Lancashire and South Cumbria areas, a group known as Healthwatch Together.
These teams find out what people like about services, and what could be improved, and share these views with the goal of making services better and improving health and wellbeing in our region.
Healthwatch champions all community groups, with a particular focus on those who find it hardest to be heard; particularly those without access to the internet. These groups include; people with disabilities, those with language barriers, elderly people and more. Their insight will enhance our understanding of the requirements of our communities and help to ensure that our proposals are designed to meet these needs.
What will the engagement look like?
Healthwatch will be working with community groups throughout the summer on a range of activities including workshops and one-to-one interviews. All engagement activity will take place in line with current restrictions and the plan is to move to face to face activity in communities as soon as it is safe to do so.
How to get involved
Taking part is easy – simply register your interest, or register on behalf of someone else. Healthwatch will then get in touch to tell you more about the ways you can share your views, through conversations with its research team. Find out more about the programme and register on the New Hospitals Programme page on the Healthwatch website (opens in new window).