Sheffield Local Involvement Network

More than 40 people attended January's Discussion Forum, which was given over entirely to the plans for HealthWatch (HW). The Government's news two weeks earlier that local HW would now start in April 2013 rather than October 2012 had taken us all by surprise. Kate Register, Quality and Involvement Manager at Sheffield City Council (SCC), who is managing the transition to HW was our only speaker and gave a very informative presentation (available on request from the LINk office).

HW in Sheffield will include all of LINk’s watchdog type work and adds 2 very different elements; signposting information for people and NHS complaints advocacy. She also gave an update on the Council’s work on planning HW and how the pathfinder bid put together by SCC, LINk and Voluntary Action Sheffield was successful. The Council have held 3 workshops around HW and a draft vision for Sheffield HealthWatch has been developed.

She said that Sheffield will be holding a tendering process to appoint the organisation(s) that will run HW although the timescales for this have now changed. While a fair amount is known about HW, the following is still not clear: how signposting will work, details about the complaints advocacy and how much money SCC will get to run it.

The presentation was very interesting and prompted a good number of questions. One person asked about the balance of work going forward between the ‘voice, influence and quality monitoring’ role that LINk has and the new elements of signposting and advocacy. Kate responded that this LINk-type work will remain a critical part of HW. She continued, however, that they are waiting for clarity from the Government about the signposting role, how big this is likely to be and also its funding since this will affect how extensive it can be.

Another question was about boundaries, for example if someone from Rotherham used a Sheffield hospital, would their complaint be handled by Rotherham or Sheffield HW. Kate responded that cases like this are unlikely to be regulated by the Government and that it would probably have to be worked out if it happened. Another member asked about whether HW would take over from PALS and while the situation is not completely clear, it seems that PALs will remain but HW will be independent of any NHS Trust.

There was broad agreement from those present for the concept of HW being a ‘network of networks’ and many people suggested those to involve in this and how to reach as many people as possible.

This led on well to the second part of the meeting, where everyone divided into smaller groups to debate three questions about how to inform and involve key groups with HW. These were volunteers, the public in general and groups that are seldom heard from. The discussions were animated and the findings are being collated and will be shared in due course.

 Click here to see SCC's HealthWatch site.