News
Check here for the latest news and updates, which we'll add below. For a monthly summary of what's happening, take a look at our e-bulletins and sign up to receive our e-bulletin direct to your email every month!
Make services easier to access say County Durham residents
Thousands of people in the North East and North Yorkshire have had a say on the future of NHS services where they live thanks to the Healthwatch #...
Annual report highlights how our work is helping improve local services
Around 60 people joined us at Spennymoor Leisure Centre on 26 June for our annual meeting, which saw the launch of our annual report for April 2018-...
Helping GPs to help you
A checklist to help GPs make their services more accessible and responsive is being sent to all GP practices across County Durham – based on the...
Speedy referrals vital for the wellbeing of those living with dementia
A speedy diagnosis, and being able to access specialist support quickly, makes a great difference to the wellbeing of people with dementia and their families. T hat's the conclusion of our new report into dementia services in County Durham - all based on feedback from people with direct experience...
Wards taking better care of people's hearing aids after calls to our team
Last year, our information and signposting team noticed a spate of calls from patients in University Hospital North Durham (UHND) complaining that hearing aids or dentures had been accidentally lost or thrown away on the wards. We took this information to the patient experience team at County...
Improvements being made to wards following our Enter and View visits
Marianne Patterson, our project lead, recently attended a meeting of the County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust patient experience forum and was excited to hear a lot of talk about the Enter and View visits our team has carried out at the trust's main hospitals together with Healthwatch...
Shining a light on transitions services
Young people's transition from children's to adult services could be improved if teaching about transitions was included within all nursing training programmes. That's just one of the recommendations we are making for how to improve transitions services based on information we have gathered from...
Project to seek views on the future of Ward 6
Healthwatch County Durham has been asked to gather the views of patients and the public regarding the future of Ward 6 at Bishop Auckland General Hospital. You may remember our updates before Christmas when the potential closure of the ward was first reported. Many people contacted us at that time...
What we'll be working on next...
Learning disabled supported living and young people's take-up of pharmacy services are just two of the areas of health and social care our team will be looking at over the next 12 months. Our priorities for 2019-20 were decided at a meeting of our Healthwatch County Durham Board in January. All the...
Shining our spotlight on hospital services
We've been busy gathering information about patient experience on a number of wards at University Hospital of North Durham. The aim was to help County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust improve the quality of services by identifying areas of good practice that can be shared between wards...
Changes to vascular services in County Durham
Together with Healthwatch Darlington, we are hosting events on behalf of NHS England about vascular services. The events are intended to provide patients of vascular services and members of the public with information about how vascular services will operate in County Durham and the changes that...
GP appointments: what you told us
Having difficulty contacting GP practices by telephone is one of the main causes of concern among patients highlighted by our new report into accessing GP appointments . More than 500 people from across County Durham shared their experiences of accessing GP appointments with us for our research...
Update: Bishop Auckland General Hospital ward 6
Many people contacted us in October with concerns about the reported closure of ward 6 at Bishop Auckland General Hospital. As promised, we have continued to press County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust (CDDFT) for clarification of their plans. We have been communicating with Sue Jacques...
Would you like Healthwatch County Durham to visit your community group or organisation?
We deliver outreach within the community providing everyone with an opportunity to ask us any questions about health and social care services. We provide information & signposting ensuring everyone gets the right support from services. We can bring our pop-up information stand or, alternatively...
Making engagement more meaningful
Many health and social care providers talk about “engaging” the public when developing their services but what does this really mean? The truth is, it isn’t always clear and often when providers or commissioners refer to “engagement” they mean different things. While some just gather patient...
Bishop Auckland General Hospital ward 6 concerns
Many patients and members of the public have contacted us with concerns about the reported closure of ward 6 at Bishop Auckland General Hospital. Be assured we are taking these seriously and have written to County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust to ask for more details, including an...
Research into cancer screening making an impact
We are continuing to work hard to make cancer screening programmes more accessible in County Durham. Recently, we brought together some of the key organisations involved in cancer care to talk to them about our recommendations for how barriers to screening could be reduced. All our suggestions were...
Care home website goes live
We are excited to announce that our project to improve care home websites has taken a big step forward. One of our volunteers, Tony Bentley, has been working closely with Kaydar , a local care home, to develop a best-practice website for care homes… and now the result of all their hard work has...
Do you think mental health services are working?
When we asked you what you’d like us to work on next, you told us mental health services were one of your biggest priorities – and now we want to know more! Effective, timely support is vital to help people with mental health problems manage their conditions. Recent governments have promised to...
New data rules mean you need to tell us if you’d like to stay in touch
There’s always something happening in health and social care, so each month we produce an e-newsletter to help you stay up-to-date. It comes direct to your inbox with news of our own work plus local events, initiatives and chances to have your say on services. As you might already know, data...
Come to our annual meeting
On Wednesday 27 June we will be hosting our annual meeting at Spennymoor Leisure Centre and we'd love to see you there. It's a great opportunity to find out more about the work we are doing and to meet our team. The meeting will run from 9am-11am so this year we will also be providing breakfast!...
Cervical screening - your feedback
Earlier this year we asked women in County Durham to share their experiences of cervical screening (smear tests) with us. Our aim was to identify ways the screening programme could be improved to encourage more women to take part, as currently around one in four women don’t attend when invited...
Learning from women’s experiences of breast screening
According to recent figures, almost one in four women in County Durham do not attend breast screening when invited to do so. Regular breast screening can help identify breast cancer early – and the earlier the condition is found, the better the chances of surviving it. So, we’ve been trying to find...
Offering GP's an independent view on services
GP practices are the frontline of health services, so it’s important they work well for everyone who needs them. That’s why we’re offering all GP practices in County Durham the opportunity for us to visit them and speak to patients independently about how they find their services. The idea is to...
Getting results for stroke patients in service shake-up
We’re pleased to announce that the local clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) have accepted all the recommendations we made in our recent report about the design of new stroke services. This report was based on the views of more than 150 service users and family members and so this should help...
