Keeping watch on our health

Yesterday healthwatch Bucks held a board meeting in public in the Community Centre. It was a happy coincidence that this November meeting was in Buckingham and became part of the Well Buckingham | Well World Festival of Health happening all week in the town. 

  

It was a fascinating meeting with much deliberation about the trends in praise and criticism of local health and social care services. healthwatch Bucks (HWB) describes itself as "an independent organisation that gives you a voice".

We exist to ensure that people's needs are at the heart of health and social care. We listen to your views and share them with those with the power to make local services better.

HWB are therefore one of the main bodies locally that offers all users & patients of the NHS and social care organisations an opportunity to be heard and for these views to be used to improve those services. If you wish to praise or criticise what has happened to you or someone close to you, please contact them.

Here is the agenda from the meeting for your information

They have just started an initiative called "Real Stories" where they are looking for people just to tell their story - good or bad - about their experience of local health and social care services. Please contact them if you would like to share your story with them.

During the public questions part of the agenda we talked about the impending changes to GP practices in the town and how HWB might be able to help find workable solutions for all concerned. I also raised the matter of why Buckinghamshire County Council were being so tight lipped about what happened with Bucks Care nearly a year ago. They said they would look into both.

Following the meeting one of their officers emailed me with this plea:

We try to ensure that the Panel is both demographically and geographically representative of the County. Unfortunately we’ve haven’t been able to get a representative in the North of the County so any help you could afford in this regard is most welcome!

They are looking for someone to join their Panel of volunteers. The role description is linked here and more information about how volunteers fit into their work is here.

Could this be you?