The role of Healthwatch is to make sure that those who run local health and care services understand and act on what really matters to people.
They listen to what people like about services and what could be improved, they share what people tell them with those with the power to make change happen. They encourage services to involve people in decisions that affect them, they also help people find the information they need about services in their area.
Healthwatch objectives are:
- Promote and support the involvement of local people in the commissioning, the provision and scrutiny of local care services;
- Enable local people to monitor the standard of local care services;
- Obtain the views of local people regarding their needs for, and experiences of, local care services and importantly to make these views known;
- Provide advice and information about access to local care services;
- Formulate views on the standard of provision and whether and how the local care services could and ought to be improved;
- Provide Healthwatch England with the intelligence and insight it needs to enable it to perform effectively.
Healthwatch values are:
- Independence: Healthwatch Cambridgeshire will be independent from Cambridgeshire County Council and all health and social care services, providers and commissioners, whether public or private. It will be a free-standing body, and strives to be respected for its independence and trusted by residents and stakeholders;
- Respect: Healthwatch Cambridgeshire respects the opinions and experience of all people and will work collaboratively with all groups, networks and organisations to pursue common goals;
- Clear recognition: Healthwatch Cambridgeshire will develop a clear strong identity, distinctive from existing local organisations. It will embrace and utilise the Healthwatch brand and identity at national level;
- Credibility: Local people, commissioners and partners will be able to trust the reliability of information, the ability to influence and the evidence underpinning its work;
- User-focus: relentlessly championing the voice of the public, patient and service user in the health and social care system;
- Inclusivity: An organisation which finds ways to work with the many different patient and service user groups across Cambridgeshire;
- Transparency: Healthwatch Cambridgeshire will be open, transparent and accountable in all it does.
You can read more about Healthwatch and how to contact them here.
