"I do not know what to do or who to see when I am ill"
Download (PDF 778.21 KB)Summary of report content
Healthwatch Oxfordshire supported a community researcher who carried out interviews with 20 older Cantonese-speaking people from Oxfordshire.
They heard that older Chinese people had both positive and negative experiences of using health and care services. They heard about barriers to care, particularly:
- Language barriers and patchy access to interpreting support
- Difficulty making GP appointments
- Long waits for care.
Healthwatch also heard how these challenges, particularly a lack of tailored communication or proper interpreting support, can compound each other, meaning that some people were waiting for an initial appointment over months rather than weeks. In several instances people chose not to contact health services when they were unwell, or had to go without care despite having tried to seek help.
Other themes heard about included:
- Problems getting prescriptions,
- Positive and negative experiences of interacting with health and care professionals and receiving treatment, and people’s perceptions of how the NHS has changed during their time living in the UK
- Gaps in how health and care services communicate with this community, with some of the issues people raised indicating that key messaging – for example about prevention, triage and modern general practice – have not been effectively targeted.
People suggested ways of reaching and hearing from them including text messaging and outreach to community centres.