Lynn Cawley, Chief Officer, Healthwatch Shropshire

The Board received the report of the Chief Officer, Healthwatch Shropshire – copy attached to the signed Minutes – which reported on meeting the communications needs of people across Shropshire.  The Chief Officer introduced and amplified her report.  She highlighted the main findings and gave a presentation (copy of slides attached to signed Minutes) which covered the following areas:

·         What we did and why

·         Who we heard from

·         What people told us

·         Positive experiences

·         Impact

·         Key issues

·         What people want

·         Recommendations

·         Ongoing work by Healthwatch England

·         Meeting the Accessible Information Standard - The CQC

She stressed the importance of people being able to have information that they can read and understand with or without support.  She informed the Board that the NHS Accessible Information Standard became law in 2016 as part of the Equalities legislation and was about giving people who were disabled, or people with sensory loss or impairment and their carers the right to get health and social care information in a way that they could understand it. 

In 2022 Healthwatch England worked with charities including RNIB, RNID, Mencap and SignHealth to look at how the standard could be improved, for example, at the moment the standard does not include those for whom English was not their first language not those for whom literacy was an issue.  The Chief Officer explained what they did to capture the views of the public which included an online survey, a focus group and visits to community groups.  Many of the people they spoke to were not aware of their rights under the standard and were asked questions including about how they received information about their health and/or social care and whether they felt they understood it.  They were asked what would make a difference to them to improve their experience of receiving information – this links to the personalisation agenda of the ICS.

In the majority of cases, people felt that their understanding was limited.  The Chief Officer stressed that the onus was on professionals to ensure that people understood the information they were given.  She took members though the effects of not understanding health or social care information and highlighted the key issues including lack of awareness of the standard, digital inequalities, privacy issues and unsupportive staff/services.  She then drew attention to the recommendations being made to the Integrated Care System and the ongoing work of Healthwatch England including lobbying Government to have the standard reviewed and expanded.

The Personalised Care Programme Manager gave another perspective and highlighted the synergies between the pieces of work undertaken by Healthwatch and the work that was continuing and developing through the Understand, Prepare and Prevent piece of work to help young people at a time of transition to understand the importance of taking up their annual health checks etc and was an opportunity to use the practical information that had been developed by Parent and Carer Council (PACC) in partnership with young people, carers and people living with learning disabilities and autism and was a way to bring to life the information that Healthwatch had gathered. 

She drew attention to a toolkit that had been developed to understand how to practically inform the development and reasonable adjustments that needed to be made for people to understand the process and the experience that they might have and how to inform health and social care colleagues about those reasonable adjustments. Discussions had also taken place with the GP Board about supporting the development and use of Health passports and looking at those reasonable adjustments as well and she gave an example of how this worked in practice. The Executive Director of Health, Wellbeing and Prevention confirmed that the recommendations would be taken forward and brought back to the Board as progress develops.  It was suggested that an overarching recommendation be added that each organisation feeds back as to what was happening in their organisation and whether this was being done as a system rather than in isolation.  It was also suggested that a paragraph be included in the Joint Forward Plan that all partners should be adhering to the standard.

A brief discussion ensued in relation to ‘Easy Read’ and it was agreed to look into this issue.

RESOLVED:

1.    Each organisation feeds back as to what was happening in their organisation and
       whether this was being done as a system rather than in isolation.

2.    Include information about the Accessible Information Standard in the Joint Forward Plan
       and refer to the connection with Person Centred Care.

3.    To note and support the recommendations contained in the report.