Your experience of health and social care services during the coronavirus outbreak
Download (PDF 495.56 KB)Summary of report content
Healthwatch Bucks developed an online survey to understand the experiences of local people during the pandemic. In particular, they wanted to find out people’s views on information and advice they had received during the outbreak, their experiences healthcare services, social care support and about their mental health and wellbeing support.
They found that –
- Most people looked for information online on national organisations’ websites, such as the Government and the NHS websites.
- Carers found it more difficult than non-carers to find trusted information and act on it.
- People did not always explicitly say whether the information was helpful or not - when specifically mentioned, BBC sources tended to be viewed as the most helpful.
- 41% of the respondents said they had been affected by the changes to their healthcare services and carers were significantly more likely to rate the communications about the changes as “poor” or “very poor” than non-carers.
- 63% of those who said they needed some support for their mental health and wellbeing said they weren’t able to access it.
- People who had needed mental health support during the lockdown mostly got it from their family or friends, followed by “A mental health care provider” and “Online or from an app”.
The report makes several recommendations on the ways that services, particularly how information is provided, could be improved in the future.