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Home    LINk activity    LINk Activity 2012    What is HealthWatch?
What is HealthWatch?

HealthWatch Briefing

What is HealthWatch?
  • HealthWatch will be the public's statutory 'champion' on health and social care services, gathering information and opinion, influencing policy and commissioning decisions, keeping an eye on quality and reporting problems and regulators.
  • Currently all areas have a LINk. In October 2012 a national lead body - Healthwatch England (HWE), will be set up as an independent committee of the Care Quality Commission (CQC). Then in April 2013, each LINk will be replaced by a Local HealthWatch (LHW), which will work closely with HWE, its national body.
And in your area?
  • Local HealthWatch will represent local service users and caers in the commissioning of services and champion equality and care services.
  • Your LINk will be replaced by, or transformed into HealthWatch + Area name to reflect to HealthWarch England branding.
  • LHWs will be independent 'incorporated bodies', with their own professional staff, but led by experienced and skilled volunteers. 
Who will your LHW represent?
  • Patients, service-users of all publicly-funded health and social care services and their carers.
  • Particularly those individuals and groups who find it most difficult to make their views and needs heard.
  • All the communities of your area in terms of their specific, and general, needs for high quality health and social care services of all kinds.
Who will fund and commission it?
  • Your find-holding local authority will be funded by government to commission, and be responsible for monitoring the quality of the Local HealthWatch
  • Local HealthWatch funding will cover the basic costs of the organisation and the costs of providing the services which LHWs will be statutorily required, or commissioned by the local authority to provide for residents in the area.
How independent will your LHW be?
  • Despite being commissioned by the local authority, LHWs will be independent bodies, able to critique any publicly-funded health or social care service in the LHW area as well as services outside the area, but used by local residents.
What functions will your LHW have?
  • It will continue with the LINk's current powers to 'Enter & View' all publicly-funded health and social care services.
  • It will lead a new patient-led inspection regime to replace the old Patient Environment Action Team (PEAT) inspections.
  • It can recommend investigation by the CQC, where it identifies an urgent need for close scrutiny of a service.
  • It will systematically gather views and experiences of patients, service users and the community as a whole on the quality of the health and social care services provided to them.
  • It will be able to take these views to the commissioning groups and the Local Authority's Health and Wellbeing Board to influence decisions on the commissioning and monitoring of services in the area.
  • It will be able to report the public's' views, circumstances and conclusions on services quality to council scrutiny committees; to CQC, the local and national regulators; and to other appropriate bodies.
  • It will have membership of the Local Authority's Health and Wellbeing Board (HWB) where it will act as a 'critical friend'.
  • It will represent, at the HWB and generally, the interests and views of all the communities in the area. 
What other services will our LHW offer?
  • It will regularly provide opportunities for local people to discuss and report on aspects of health and social care provision in their areas, and systematically feed the information from them into the policy and commissioning processes.
  • It will visibly promote and support the involvement of patients and the public in the commissioning and provision of local health and care services. So it can seek to be involved in all NHS, local authority social care, and joint commissioning groups and their sub-bodies. 
  • It will provide information (i.e. signposting) to the public about access to health and social care services as well as to advocacy services, where support in making a complaint is needed.
  • If commissioned to do so by the local authority, it could also provide complaints advocacy services to the public.
  • It will promote patient choice and offer a services to support the public in making informed choices in the health and social care provision they require, and if gaps are identified, bring them to the attention of commissioners.
How will it work with the Care Quality Commission?
  • The NHS Constitution will be the benchmark of NHS service-users' rights and will underpin this working relationship.
  • Local HealthWatches will also be accountable to HWE and work closely with that national body to provide a collective steer for it to carry out its role as national champion. 
  • HWE will be a relatively independent committee within CQC nationally.
  • Good working relationships between LINks and the CQC's locally may already have been established
  • Effective information exchange needs to be developed.
  • Good information governance protocols will be established to ensure that concerns can be acted upon quickly, based on accurate information.
How will it work with local voluntary and community organisations?
  • LHWs need to effectively encompass working with, and fully involving the voluntary and community sector organisations in their areas as well as with the general public, in order that they fully engage with all parts of their communities. 
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