Agenda item

7.1  The Chair stated that each year the Commission considered the Annual Report of the local Healthwatch and the Chair welcomed for this item:

  Jon Williams (JW), Executive Director, Healthwatch Hackney

7.2  Members’ gave consideration to the Annual Report 2019/20 of Healthwatch Hackney and the associated presentation.

7.3  JW took members through the highlights of the report.  He also gave apologies for the interim Chair, Malcolm Alexander, who had been unable to attend.  He added that a permanent Chair would be recruited in due course.  He suggested that there should be closer work with the local VCS on the digital divide issues as, in his view, this problem would only get worse.  More generally, over the year they were detecting a lot of frustration from residents about a top-down approach in the NHS e.g. the surgical hubs or the move of the dementia beds to East Ham.  There had been a small drop in satisfaction levels but this had also been the trend.  The need for better support for long term mental health patients was also a concern, much of the focus was on the lower level clients seeking IAPT.  He stated that Healthwatch had been very proud of its large volunteer base.  He stated that many residents were concerned about the government’s hostile environment policies and that charging poor and vulnerable people was a deterrent to them seeking vital health care and represented very bad policy making.  He explained that the co-chaired the Communications Enabler Group of ICB  and more work needed to be done to understand how greater public involvement can be taken forward.  He also highlighted the existence of the Involvement Alliance which aided existing organisations to work better together.  In terms of funding, they continued to be well funded by the Council despite the pressure it was under and they had also received much funding support from the CCG.  They had discontinued their involvement in City Healthwatch.

7.4  Members asked questions and in the replies the following points were noted:

(a) The Chair commended Healthwatch for striking such a good balance between being funded by both the Council and the CCG and at the same time holding both to account so well.

(b) Members commended the quality and accessibility of the report again this year.

(c) A Member commented that there was a low level of awareness about how the local GP Confederation sets minimum standards for GP Practices and that this was an excellent way to achieve consistent approaches across them all but residents were not aware of this function.  He asked if a piece of work could be done to look at the awareness of the public on the existence of these common standards and whether Healthwatch had done any surveys on this.

JW replied that this was an excellent point and that they had not done any specific surveys on this but it was something they could pick up with the Confederation focusing on patients’ rights and service user rights akin to the Complaints Charter.

He added that people don’t know what their rights are or what to expect and if you put it to them in a simple way that would be very helpful to patients but we should be surveying GPs to ensure that they are working to a consistent standard. 

(d) The Chair asked whether the digitisation of access to primary care during the pandemic was having the effect of widening the digital divide and whether the borough had a joined up approach in terms of access and what the best practice was elsewhere and what could be learnt from those examples. 

JW stated that this was a major challenge and he was expecting it to get worse.  He was appreciative of the work HCVS was doing in this area.  Given state of economy many are going to be struggling more and there will be a rise in unemployment which would exacerbate this.  One of the challenges was that those on the wrong side of the digital divide were very hard to reach in the first place. He added that a recent survey had shown a lack of confidence in what both central government and local govt was saying.  He said he expected the former but was surprised that local government was now coming across as being mistrusted and was seen as not listening.  It was really important that as a system we worked together with community groups, faith groups and others who can help to give us access to groups who are seldom heard and who may be losing out more in the digital divide. 

(e) MR added that the CCG would welcome being part of the piece of work which JW outlined on GP access.  They had 1.6m consultations last year in C&H and they needed to explore whether this was a problem of some Practices not being organised on the day or did it highlight a more systemic problem and that more insight on this would be most welcome.

7.5  The Chair asked if there was scope for Healthwatch and the GP Confederation to work together on perhaps developing a Protocol to standardise approaches to the digital divide issues across the GP Practices in Hackney.  He added that the issue might be difficult but that in the current situation many on the wrong side of the digital divide were feeling shut out by primary care and this was a problem because it disproportionately affected the more vulnerable residents.  JW undertook to explore this.

7.6  The Chair thanked JW for his report and for his attendance.