Agenda item

 

To receive information from Kym Gleeson, Manager, Healthwatch Rotherham about her role and that of Healthwatch in the context of the Health Select Commission.

 

 

The Chair welcomed Kym Gleeson, Manager, Healthwatch Rotherham and Andrea McCann, Engagement Officer, Healthwatch Rotherham to the meeting.

 

 

 

The Healthwatch Manager explained that the structure of Healthwatch was similar to the structure of the NHS, with Healthwatch England sat above the 153 local Healthwatch offices in the UK. They set out Healthwatch’s recently amended values; equity, collaboration, independence, truth and impact and explained the various models under which Healthwatch operated.

 

As Healthwatch England was now 10 years old, the operating model was to undergo evaluation to ensure that this reflected the best offer and to improve consistency.

 

Rotherham Healthwatch was hosted by Citizen’s Advice, which was felt to offer additional benefits enabling those who consulted Healthwatch to simultaneously access other information and support services through Citizen’s advice without the delay of a separate referral and intervention.

 

Notwithstanding the benefits of co-location and collaboration, Healthwatch Rotherham remained a totally independent service, with their own strategic board steering work and the development of priorities.

 

The service received enquiries from individuals or relatives of individuals seeking elements of care or support with a health condition.  All enquiries were recorded anonymously, collated, and channelled appropriately. Healthwatch were also involved in the task and finish group to refresh the Health and Wellbeing strategy, ensuring that the voice and concerns of Rotherham residents were at its heart.

 

Healthwatch delivered ‘Let’s Talk’ sessions in conjunction with community partners on topics of their choosing, including a CPR information session recently delivered in collaboration with Yorkshire Ambulance Service which provided reassurances to a heart support group regarding ambulance availability, call categorisation, CPR and defibrillation processes.

 

Andrea McCann had been upskilled to enable her to train community groups and empower them to become community ambassadors supporting specific groups such as those living with Diabetes. Healthwatch had also worked with public health to deliver sessions on smoking and vaping to college students.  Further information concerning this work was accessible via the Healthwatch Rotherham website.

 

Healthwatch conducted ‘enter and view’ work, under powers still not fully understood by many health and social care services, which could only be refused by the subject service where it would significantly adversely impact delivery. In order to justify an enter and view visit, Healthwatch must have significant intelligence and cannot randomly select visit subjects. Visits this year had included a care home and a GP practice.

 

It was stressed that Healthwatch worked in partnership with services, with such visits providing constructive criticism and feedback enabling services to understand the experiences of service users. Subjects received advanced notice of planned visits, and they were shared publicly with QR codes and other media encouraging wider public engagement and the completion of questionnaires. These were shared with both staff and service users.

 

Reports and recommendations were shared with the organisations visited prior to publication to provide them with the opportunity to refute or otherwise comment on the findings, in the interest of fairness.

 

Healthwatch Rotherham was a small team dealing with a broad scope of health and social care issues across the Rotherham borough, supported by volunteers. Their aim was to gather as much feedback as possible to enable them to understand the issues occurring in Rotherham, through the lens of those affected, acknowledging that often individuals are the experts on their own health and its associated impact.

 

With just three members of staff, Healthwatch Rotherham had provided information to 189 individuals, issued a newsletter which reached 628 people, attended 680 engagement and outreach events, signposted people to 114 local and national organisations, attended 32 community groups and attended 203 meetings between April and October 2024.

 

Healthwatch believed high quality training underpinned staff’s ability to deliver an optimal service, with 40 training sessions undertaken to support their work. More detail would be shared with the Commission concerning Healthwatch’s extended reach and the work undertaken to grow this further following the publication of the Annual Report in June 2025.

 

The Healthwatch Manager requested that Members sign up to the Healthwatch newsletter, acted as ambassadors for Healthwatch and made their constituents aware of the services Healthwatch could offer. They requested that the Council considers adding Healthwatch Rotherham to its newsletter to extend reach.

 

They explained that services and advice could be accessed anonymously online, or in person every Thursday between 9.30 am and 12.30 pm at the Citizen’s Advice offices in Rotherham Town Centre.

 

The Chair thanked Healthwatch Rotherham for the presentation and invited questions from members.

 

Councillor Havard stated that she was familiar with Healthwatch’s work through her involvement in the carers group.  They queried whether there were any challenges around engagement with the public and if so, how did Healthwatch overcome those.

 

The Healthwatch Engagement Officer advised that engagement is difficult, noting that perseverance was vital.  They explained that there was the desire to reach underrepresented groups across Rotherham, which they had addressed by making good use of Rotherham’s strong networking, attending events and meeting people involved in various fields to develop a strong professional network, acknowledging that this will be constantly developing and evolving over time.

 

Councillor Havard queried whether officers could share information with the Neighbourhood Teams to include in their newsletters to ensure that links to Healthwatch were shared borough wide.

 

The Chair suggested that this could form a recommendation.

 

Councillor Garnett asked how Healthwatch intended to progress the emerging themes for 2024/25.

 

The Healthwatch Manager advised that there were several lines of inquiry being considered, and noted that a number of the areas highlighted as emerging themes reflected workstreams already under development outside of Healthwatch and it would be of no benefit to duplicate work being undertaken elsewhere.  They used mental health as an example of a strong theme, not just within the borough, but nationwide, noting that Healthwatch worked with Rotherham, Doncaster and South Humber NHS Foundation Trust (RdaSH) in 2023 to look at the crisis service, so they had already fed into improvements in that area.  They explained that Healthwatch would conduct a holistic review of all emerging themes in January 2025 to consider the way forward and noted that GP services was a significant issue.  They were addressing the concerns raised by working with individual practices.

 

Councillor Garnett queried whether there were any plans to formally refer any of those emerging themes to the Health Select Commission for consideration.

 

The Healthwatch Manager advised that there were no plans to do this at present, but following full review in January, this was something Healthwatch would consider if there was any area that it had tried to address and where it felt unable to make significant progress.  They welcomed the Health Select Commission’s support in this.

 

Councillor Bennett-Sylvester welcomed Healthwatch’s presence in the town centre, however they expressed concerns around the digital divide and the adverse impact on his ward’s constituents in terms of their ability to access services.  They asked whether Healthwatch had considered using the ‘open arms’ service through Rotherfed to increase the availability of face-to-face access to Healthwatch’s services. Councillor Bennett-Sylvester also echoed Councillor Havard’s suggestion of utilising the Council’s neighbourhood teams and queried how much asset mapping had been done to identify the community resources at Healthwatch’s disposal for community outreach work.

 

 

The Healthwatch Manager advised that they had tried a number of the ‘open arms’ surgeries and events, but unfortunately these had delivered a relatively low footfall and given the size of the Healthwatch team, impact and value was a key consideration.  This was not to say that this would be entirely ruled out in future should the need arise.  They further explained that in order to address digital exclusion, there was a range of information that Healthwatch could provide in person through its connections with numerous community groups, but they are open to further extending their network and in person reach.

 

Councillor Bennett-Sylvester asked if Healthwatch would be receptive to invitations to ward surgeries to consider the needs of constituents.

 

Healthwatch confirmed that such opportunities would be welcomed.

 

Councillor Thorp explained that they held concerns for individuals affected by epilepsy in terms of employment issues following diagnosis, and general public awareness of how to respond to seizures. He explained that he had become aware of some new materials available to support epilepsy awareness and queried whether Healthwatch could become involved in promoting and disseminating those materials. 

 

The Healthwatch Manager explained that they understood that for someone unfamiliar with epilepsy, witnessing someone suffering a seizure could be a dramatic and distressing experience and very difficult for someone to know how to respond appropriately.  As such, Healthwatch would very much welcome access to any materials and would be happy to promote services aimed at increasing epilepsy awareness.

 

They also advised that they would encourage any epilepsy sufferers experiencing difficulties gaining or sustaining employment post diagnosis to challenge employers to respond appropriately in line with their duties under the Equality Act which offered protection from discrimination.

 

Councillor Thorp explained that the epilepsy society would be sharing the materials with him and asked if Healthwatch was happy to have these forwarded. 

 

The Healthwatch Manager confirmed that they would.

 

The Chair requested that Councillor Thorp also share these with the Governance Advisor so that they could be disseminated to  the Health Select Commission as a whole.

 

Councillor Yasseen noted that within the presentation, the services priorities and the emerging themes were two very different lists.  They queried the relationship between the two, and how emerging themes became priorities.

 

 

The Healthwatch Manager clarified that the emerging themes were the issues that were currently or recently coming through, whereas the priorities were those issues that Healthwatch had worked on over the previous year.  They explained that the priorities were establish through a years’ worth of engagements, with the prevalence of issues supporting the generation of Healthwatch’s work plan.  They cited the ‘easy read’ offer for people with autism as an example of this.  Historically the availability of the ‘easy read’ offer had been very low, but had been grown significantly as a result of being a priority, which had led to Healthwatch supporting Rotherham Hospital with its easy read offer to assist in their communications with individuals with learning disabilities.

 

Councillor Yasseen explained that they were aware that there had been historical difficulties for Healthwatch around engagement with BAME (Black and Minority Ethnic) communities.  They explained that this linked with an issue reflected in the subsequent agenda item, the TRFT Annual Report, in terms of health inequalities and therefore sought clarity around whether Healthwatch believed this was an area that should be strengthened and how Councillors could support Healthwatch in that area.

 

The Healthwatch Manager confirmed that the service did have links with a couple of groups that supported BAME communities, acknowledging that the service has had to work hard to build trust through consistent engagement in order to fully understand and represent the issues affecting BAME communities. They confirmed that this remains a priority for Healthwatch, which could be strengthened further.

 

Councillor Clarke queried how lived experience of poverty fed into the work of Healthwatch and how digital exclusion impacts on those living in poverty, asking if the service would welcome the experiences of constituents from her ward on how these hardships translate into health inequalities.

 

The Healthwatch Manager explained that whilst poverty was not within the remit of Healthwatch, associated factors of poverty and the health impacts of them are so they would be interested in hearing any relevant case studies.  They confirmed that their host Citizen’s Advice would likely be better placed to provide advice and assistance to support those living in poverty, citing this as one of the benefits of the collaborative working between the two organisations referred to within the presentation.

 

Councillor Clarke explained that they held concerns around the mental health impacts, and increased risk of infectious diseases to those experiencing hardship, particularly in the case of those affected by fuel poverty.

 

 

 

 

 

Resolved:-

 

That the Health Select Commission:

 

1.    Noted the role of Healthwatch and the contents of the presentation delivered.

2.    Requested that details of Healthwatch’s offer was shared with all Councillors and relevant Council Officers for onward circulation to constituents via Neighbourhood Teams, to support the service’s reach across the borough.

3.    Requested that the information and materials shared with Councillor Thorp by the Epilepsy Society was shared with all Members of the Health Select Commission.