Annual Report 2016/17

Highlights from the year include:

Securing Strong Local Engagement
Healthwatch Richmond reached 3,500 local people in the 2016/17 financial year, enabling us to raise our profile, share information on care, and engage many people in their local services. The groups we met included 1,865 young people, 429 individuals who access local care but may not live locally, 642 older people, and 450 disadvantaged or seldom heard people. The figures include 853 members of local grassroots organisations.

Improving Children & Young People's Emotional Wellbeing
After we made important recommendations for youth emotional wellbeing services, the local NHS and Council incorporated our findings into their Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) transformation plan. Online counselling has been commissioned for young people. We surveyed 1,580 young people for our report.

Improving Residential Care
During the year, we helped improve local residential care by significantly expanding our Enter & View programme. We visited eight local care homes in Richmond, Twickenham, Hampton Hill, Teddington and East Sheen, making a variety of important recommendations and monitoring responses.

Engaging People in NHS Change
There have been significant changes in the commissioning of local health provision. Healthwatch Richmond played an important part in engaging local people, through our event attended by 140 people, and by encouraging people to complete a Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) survey that received 300 responses. We successfully encouraged the CCG to publish its list of major surgical changes.

2016/17 in Figures

• £20,000 of additional investment to strengthen Healthwatch Richmond's work
• 4,000 unique visits to our website
• 3,500 people reached through engagement and project work
• 124 bulletins sent to our subscribers
• 93 people signposted to support and information
• 19 volunteers visited 8 care homes and 2 hospital wards