Listening to rural communities in the High Weald

Healthwatch East Susses undertook a listening tour of the High Weald are of East Sussex in June 2019 to find out what people felt about health and social care provision.  They communicated with 10,000 people during the tour, including over 9,000 on-line through social media and 994 people face to face. 365 people also responded to their mini survey on the NHS and Adult Social Care, with 42 completing a more comprehensive set of questions.

Findings

• People felt that the best thing about the NHS was that it was free and the worst thing was the waiting times.  They felt that one change that would improve it would be more staff and funding.
• When asked about social care, over half of the people expected their family to care for them if they became frail or disabled and over 40% expected that their family would pay if they needed to live in a care home.
• Prevention featured consistently in responses to how the NHS could save money.
• The main services accessed by local people such as acute hospitals, local GPs, dentists and pharmacies were highly rated, with Pharmacies recording the most consistent positive responses overall. The local Community Hospitals at Crowborough and Uckfield were frequently mentioned as a ‘valued asset’ to the community. Not featuring so positively were access to Child Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), and some Adult mental health services, especially for people in crisis.
• Adult Social Care received mixed responses, it was either ‘fantastic’ for some, or really disappointing for others. Where people and families had good interactions with social workers, it worked very well.
• Communication or movements across geographical borders and different agencies featured quite strongly.
• This report also includes a snapshot of people's experiences in accessing local NHS Dental services and Emergency Dental Services.
• Local Pharmacies are identified as a valuable resource to the wider NHS system and Healthwatch can assist in promoting the use of consulting rooms.

There were no recommendations made, but Healthwatch East Sussex are intending to repeat the exercise in the summer of 2020 to review this report and to report back to local communities what has changed since this report.