HealthWatch England Advisory Group

HealthWatch England Advisory Group

For further information on this project, please contact Tracey Bignall

The Race Equality Foundation has been selected to partake in the advisory group for HealthWatch England. 

What is HealthWatch?

Current plans for HealthWatch England  see it as an independent arm of the Care Quality Commission, designed to represent the interests of health and social care service users. HealthWatch England will work with Local HealthWatch to highlight areas for concern and recommend action to best represent the needs of NHS users.  It is also the intention that HealthWatch England will be consulted on new commissioning guidelines to 'influence national strategy, policy and operations, as well as input to the registration and regulation of services'.

Find out more about HealthWatch:

What is the HealthWatch England Advisory Group?

The HealthWatch England Advisory Group is an advisory group set up to provide ‘bottom-up’ expert, practical advice and recommendations to the programme board about implementation of the Government’s proposals for HealthWatch England.  Members of the Advisory Group come from a number of health and social care backgrounds, including representatives from the voluntary and community and equalities sectors.

What will HealthWatch England Advisory Group do?

The groups will identify priorities for the establishment of HealthWatch.  Four of areas identified so far are:

  • a vision of a model for consumer voice and how HealthWatch delivers that vision in the reformed NHS;
  • clarity about the baseline - what works well and what does not;
  • building a ‘convincing case’ - ensuring that LINks are able to evolve into Local HealthWatch and assess the implications if they cannot, how Local HealthWatch is unique, can add-value and is value for money;
  • identify governance, minimum standards, assessment criteria and working models.

What has been produced?

Preparing for HealthWatch

Preparing for HealthWatch: CQC’s plan to set up HealthWatch England (480kb PDF file) provides a detailed timeline on plans to set up HealthWatch England.  It sets out important landmarks including:

  • recruitment of HealthWatch England chair- to be in place by April 2012
  • appointing staff – senior staff to be in place by June 2012
  • developing information and briefings for local HealthWatch organisations – by June 2012
  • developing a work plan for the new organisation – by summer 2012
  • agreeing the budget with the Department of Health – by summer 2012
  • agreeing how the relationship between HealthWatch England and CQC will work – by summer 2012
  • agreeing the composition of and appointing the HealthWatch England committee – the committee will take up its role in October 2012
  • developing the HealthWatch England web site – to launch in October 2012

More information is also available from the 'HealthWatch channel' (external website) of the DH website.

Bulletins

HealthWatch are publishing regular bulletins to provide an update on the work they are carrying out.

The minutes of the Advisory Group are also available for download from the CQC website.

Online community

An online community has also been established to help you find out more about HealthWatch.  The team will be holding a series of online discussions to answer any questions you may have.  To register please email healthwatch@nunwood.com.

Consultation
The following consultation looks at conditions for membership of HealthWatch England and considers issues including:

  • the number of the members
  • suitability for membership
  • the process for appointing members
  • the period of time a member should be appointed.

The deadline for the consultation is Friday 2 March.

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© 2011 Race Equality Foundation