Urgent Community Response Report

This is a report by Healthwatch Nottingham and Nottinghamshire. 

The Urgent Community Response (UCR) project was undertaken to examine the effectiveness of this service. This project was commissioned by the Nottingham & Nottinghamshire Integrated Care Board (ICB). Since they are in the early stages of piloting this new pathway, it was considered important to collect patient feedback to help shape the trajectory of this service. 

For the project 34 service users were spoken to in a telephone interview, from 103 individuals whose details were shared and who had agreed to take part in this study. All persons were contacted, but some elected not to take part and others were not contactable after repeated attempts to get in touch. In some cases, it was possible to a carer or family member as opposed to the service user directly, where the individual was unwell or had other difficulties in communicating.

People were broadly happy with the service. There could be more awareness of the existence of the service and what it does.

There are recommendations in this report.

1. Find a way to notify service users of when to expect staff to arrive for the first time

2. Ensure that carers/family members know when UCR staff will arrive

3. Develop a good explanatory leaflet to describe the nature of the service

4. Provide a means of letting service users contact the service if issues arise

5. Identify if the service is not reaching certain minority communities

There are no follow up actions in this report.