Annual Report 2015/16

The key achievements of Healthwatch Wandsworth in 2015/16 were:

• Extensive community engagement, speaking to more than 1,250 local patients, carers and service users through 106 outreach sessions, with a particular focus on vulnerable and seldom-heard groups. 
• Influencing service commissioning and redesign, including:
  • Gathering feedback from 142 parents and carers which helped shape the new Health Visiting Service specification.
  • Conducting Enter and View visits to all three Extra Care housing schemes in Wandsworth and using the findings to influence new commissioning specifications. 
• Producing evidence-based reports, publishing 7 consultation reports and 5 Enter and View reports on topics including health visiting, suicide prevention, FGM awareness, healthy eating, learning disabilities, sheltered housing and extra-care schemes. 
• Achieving impact through recommendations, with:
  • Suicide prevention recommendations being incorporated into Wandsworth's new Suicide Prevention Strategy. 
  • Healthy eating findings helping inform local healthy eating initiatives. 
  • Health visiting findings informing commissioning decisions.
• Strengthening Enter and View activity, recruiting and training six new volunteers, visiting Extra Care schemes and specialist care homes, and influencing providers to implement action plans based on recommendations. 
• Providing information and signposting support, delivering 57 information and signposting sessions to vulnerable groups, including older people, parents, mental health service users and food bank users. 
• Expanding youth engagement, working with young people on mental health, healthy eating and wellbeing projects, supporting National Citizen Service volunteers, and launching the**#WhatKeepsMeWell** Instagram campaign. 
• Increasing public involvement and influence, with:
  • 21 volunteer representatives sitting on more than 40 boards, committees and groups.
  • Four public meetings attended by over 200 people. 
• Growing organisational reach and membership, reaching 2,500 Twitter followers, attracting over 5,700 website visits (new and returning visitors combined), and increasing membership to 707 individual members and 217 organisational members. 

Overall, the report highlights Healthwatch Wandsworth's success in combining community engagement, research, Enter and View activity and representation to influence local health and social care policy, commissioning and service improvement.