Recent Projects

We are pleased to publish our 15 Steps Visit at Northampton General Hospital Report, which was performed and created by Young Healthwatch Northamptonshire.

In November 2023, Young Healthwatch Northamptonshire was invited to Northampton General Hospital to assess and provide feedback on the wards visited. They did this by using the 15 steps method and were able to provide a young person’s perspective when giving feedback on areas of improvement and excellence.

We now have published a report detailing our findings. The report was written by Young Healthwatch volunteers in their own words, allowing the young volunteers to express their opinions and then finalised by the Healthwatch North and West Northamptonshire staff. The report is based on what they observed and the people they spoke to. The full report can be accessed below.

Patients at Oakham Medical Practice (OMP) shared their views and recent experiences of services at the Practice in Healthwatch Rutland’s (HWR) latest Enter and View report.

HWR wanted to explore how patients are experiencing the many changes that have been made at the Practice throughout the last year or so.

Working in collaboration with the OMP Patient Participation Group, 82 people were interviewed across 6 visits to the Practice in August and September 2023. In addition, 1055 people completed a survey, which was available both online and in hardcopy.

• The majority of people interviewed said the quality of medical care is good (82%) compared with 47% of survey respondents giving the same rating.
• Patients are more confident and happier to see health care professionals other than GPs and the practice nurses are valued highly.
• During the visits, almost equal numbers of patients said they found it easy to make an appointment as found it difficult. This shows a variance against survey responses where just under one third of patients said they find it easy to make appointments and just under two thirds said they find it difficult.
• When asked “What one thing about the Practice would you change?” the biggest proportion of survey respondents (42%) wanted more appointments to be available.

The report includes 10 recommendations and a response to the findings and recommendations from Practice Management.

We are pleased to publish our Northampton General Hospital ’15 Steps’ Maternity Report. This report details the findings from our visit to the Maternity Ward at Northampton General Hospital. In May 2023, Healthwatch North and West Northamptonshire partnered with Northamptonshire Maternity and Neonatal Voices Partnership to conduct a ’15-Steps’ Enter and View visit to the Northampton General Hospital’s Maternity Unit. On the day of the visit the Healthwatch North and West Northamptonshire volunteers went to the Maternity Day Unit, the Barratt Birth Centre, the Balmoral Ward, the Labour Ward, the Robert Watson ward, and Transitional Care. We appreciated the ability to be allowed into the Maternity Facilities to evaluate and assess the premises, and our volunteers enjoyed the opportunity to be able to speak with staff and patients to better understand their experiences. Please read our report to see our findings from the visit. The information gained from the visit was used to make some recommendations, and areas in which the service was providing quality care were acknowledged.

On the 2nd of May 2023, two volunteers from Healthwatch North and West Northamptonshire (HWNW) visited Kettering General Hospital (KGH) Maternity Department to carry out a ’15 Steps for Maternity’ audit. This audit looks at the quality of services provided from the perspective of people who use maternity services.

Healthwatch North and West Northamptonshire aim with this Maternity visit was to evaluate the services being provided within Kettering General Hospital, which included visits to the Screening Unit, the Delivery Suite, Rowan Ward, and the Snowdrop Garden.

The information gained from the visit was used to make some recommendations, and areas in which the service was providing quality care were acknowledged.

Healthwatch North and west Northamptonshire and Healthwatch Rutland teamed up to listen to people’s experiences of using the service over two days – the 11th February and 17^th February 2023.

Three volunteers and a member of staff from Healthwatch North and West Northamptonshire and Healthwatch Rutland visited the CUCC. The visits were at the request of CUCC as part of their commitment to engage with, and get feedback from, members of the public as part of their programme of continuous improvement.

They engaged with 38 people in total, 24 people in person and 14 people through an online survey in Rutland and Northamptonshire.

The majority of people they spoke to during the visits and who responded to the online survey were ‘walk-in’ patients rather than having a pre-booked appointment.

Overall patients were very satisfied with the service received, with 79% of people from the survey rating their overall experience at the centre as ‘very good’.

Healthwatch North and West Northamptonshire were asked by Change Grow Live, a substance support and solution organisation, to engage with service users and gather a better understanding of their experiences. Change Grow Live or CGL is an organisation that aspires and is committed to delivering services that make a real difference to people’s lives and the communities they serve. Their work focuses on rehabilitation and support for those individuals who are struggling with substance dependency. Change Grow Live services include programmes such as Substance to Solution, Drug and Alcohol Service, and a Resettlement Service.

Healthwatch employees carried out 2 focus groups to engage with users of the service and gathered their feedback on the care they were provided, and to elaborate about their views of care regarding substance misuse.

They gathered experiences from 94 users of the service and formulated a report using their findings.

A spokesperson from Change Grow Live said “It was great to work with Healthwatch on this project and we are reviewing how we provide additional support, exploring extended opening hours, accessibility via our digital offer, and using technology to provide alternative ways for people to access our support”. And, Kate Holt, CEO of Healthwatch said “It was a great project to work on. Service users welcomed our interaction and spoke to us quite openly about their struggles with substance misuse and the support that CGL offers them to cope with their issues”.