Healthwatch Dorset Annual Report: The value of listening

In our latest annual report, The value of listening, we highlight some of the ways we used your feedback to help NHS and social care decision-makers prioritise the issues that matter most to local people to help make care better.

• Improving patient access to urgent and emergency care: Our recommendations, based on feedback from the public and front-line staff, guided improvements in NHS Dorset’s online information and 111 signposting service. They have also informed ongoing work to redesign urgent care in Dorset, including enabling GPs to book patients directly into urgent care services, and a public communications plan is being developed to address the lack of awareness and understanding around urgent care services.
• Improving mental health support for young people: We asked young people facing additional challenges and inequality about their experience of mental health services and the changes they want to see. We identified key areas for improvement including shorter waiting times, better continuity of care and follow up, less clinical and more comfortable settings, and an approach that treats young people as individuals. The new Dorset NHS review and development plan addresses several issues highlighted in our report and outlines how the local system will tackle the issues young people face.
• Better NHS dental care in Dorset: Dentistry was the top issue people contacted us about last year, mostly because they were struggling to find a dentist taking on new NHS patients or for urgent care. By working with NHS Dorset we influenced dental care commissioning, including a child-friendly dental pilot practice, an additional 100 urgent care appointments a week for people who do not have a regular dentist, and additional capacity for looked after children and in areas of deprivation. We also influenced local initiatives looking at oral health education and addressing the backlog of community and special care dentistry.
• Raising awareness to improve support for vulnerable people and communities: We established new partnerships and worked together with local health, care and community groups to raise awareness of the challenges impacting people’s health and wellbeing and the support that makes a positive difference.

Announcing the annual report, Viv Aird, Chair of the Healthwatch Dorset Board, said: “This has been another busy year for Healthwatch Dorset, during which we have ensured that your voice is heard at the highest level and that your concerns are acted upon. I am committed to a healthcare system that is holistic and preventative in its approach, tackling the root causes of ill health which are often socio-economic in origin. I believe passionately that services can be improved if they reflect and respond to the views and needs of the people who use them, and we are committed to achieving this in Dorset.”