Annual Report 2022/23
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Healthwatch North Yorkshire report on its key achievements for 2022/23. It:
- Led influential work on NHS dentistry, highlighting the impact of the dental access crisis on people’s health and wellbeing. The findings helped shape a new oral health strategy, informed scrutiny work, and contributed to additional national funding for NHS dentistry.
- Championed improvements in adult social care, highlighting workforce shortages and pressures across the care sector. The work helped secure additional local investment, supported workforce initiatives, and contributed to action plans designed to strengthen care provision.
- Improved access to healthcare information by investigating how accessible information is provided for people with communication needs. The findings led to commitments from NHS trusts and safeguarding partners to improve accessibility and implement the Accessible Information Standard.
- Gathered evidence on young people’s mental health and wellbeing, with findings informing reviews of children and young people’s services and contributing to wider regional mental health strategy development.
- Worked extensively with care homes through Enter and View visits, helping improve activities, dementia-friendly environments, food provision, signage, staffing arrangements and the overall experience of residents.
- Highlighted the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on people’s health and wellbeing, ensuring these experiences informed local health and wellbeing planning across North Yorkshire.
- Reached more than 3,000 people and strengthened engagement with seldom-heard groups, including older people, people with disabilities, carers, farmers, veterans, young people and people living in temporary accommodation, ensuring their experiences informed service planning and improvement.
- Worked closely with regional partners across Humber and North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire, ensuring local voices influenced decisions about mental health, dentistry, digital access, palliative care and wider health service planning.