Right to Respond

As part of our commitment to providing an honest and transparent view of health and social care services, Healthwatch Birmingham encourages providers to respond to comments the public have left.

Alongside ensuring providers can have a fair say in discussions about their services, replying to reviews demonstrates evidence of responding to patient feedback for the CQC, who regularly monitor our Feedback Centre. It is also an effective way to recruit service users for any wider engagement work at your organisation.

Guidelines for provider responses:

  • Keep language appropriate and civil
  • Remain professional and treat people’s comments fairly
  • Engage with the content of the review by addressing specific points and avoid cut and pasting a standard response
  • Don’t disclose the service user’s personal details or any potentially identifying information
  • Where appropriate leave organisational contact details e.g PALS or patient engagement teams for people to get further information

Remember: your response will be seen by everyone who uses the Feedback Centre, not just the original reviewer. All responses are moderated in accordance with our moderation policy.

For full terms and conditions, including a guide to how right to reply works for service providers download this guide.

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Original feedback for

Eden Unit, Northcroft Site


Gatekeep

How do you transform a service? Since COVID, Birmingham's NHS services have been fatally underfunded and understaffed, leading to major gaps in healthcare and patient safety. So the permanent staff on Eden Unit take it upon themselves to turn the service around by making sure word never gets out about how inhospitable the service is. Shining a light on the issues is just asking for trouble and the IMHAs can only advise compliance in the face of oppression. If you're a philosopher or social scientist and want a real-time 24/7 reenactment of the Stanford Prison Experiment or any given Kafka novel, it's a 5-star service. For anyone else, it's a 0-star service that looks good online. If I had to justify the single star awarded here, it would be that the permanent staff behave exactly as Franz Fanon described settlers in his work, Wretched of the Earth, and it's quite interesting to see his words held up over 63 years after publication.