Merry Christmas!
We’d like to thank you all for helping to make 2024 another successful year for Healthwatch Birmingham. Find out about some of our highlights below.
We listened to over 9,000 local residents about their experiences of health and social care services at our engagement events across Birmingham in hospitals, GP surgeries and other healthcare settings, as well as through our online Feedback Centre. To make sure we hear from all the city’s diverse communities, our community engagement teams have also been to mosques, colleges, food banks and events run by our wonderful network of voluntary sector partners.
Our volunteers are essential to helping us reach as many people as possible and this year we’ve been happy to welcome more people into our brilliant team. We’re really proud to have them representing Healthwatch Birmingham out in the community. Find out more about joining us as a volunteer.
What we hear helps us understand what’s important to the people who use health and social care services, and our reports and investigations mean services hear them too. This year we’ve shared what people have told us in our reports into community mental health services, pharmacies, support for children and young people with ADHD and/or autism and referrals from primary to secondary care. We’re currently looking for feedback from people who use home care services.
Our reports make a big difference to the care people receive. We support services to make the changes people want and this year we’ve helped with important improvements to maternity services for Black African and Black Caribbean families, prostate cancer patients and people seeking help for mental health.
Over 6,000 people have come to us for free and confidential information and signposting to get the facts they need to help make complaints, register with a GP, find local support groups and much more. We also expanded our website with more information about getting help with the NHS and social care so answers to the most common questions about local services are now just a click away.
Healthwatch Birmingham is proud to be your champion for local health and social care services. We’re grateful to everyone who has shared their views with us this year, and we hope to hear from many more as we head into 2025.
The Healthwatch Birmingham office is closed for the Christmas break from 1pm on Tuesday 24th December 2024 until 8am on Thursday 2nd January 2025.