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

Yewcroft CMHT


Patronising & seemingly inexperienced staff

Awful experiences of care here. All of the members of staff I have dealt with have hugely downplayed the issues I have explained and made me feel patronised. It seems that the majority of them don’t even have a basic understanding of how to build rapport with a patient or talk to them on a human level, let alone have a good understanding of how to deal with someone in crisis. After telling them I felt suicidal with intent and plans I was sent home with a number to ring if ‘anything changes’. I can now understand why people feel that they have to make an attempt on their life to get the help they need, so very sad but true! This team seriously needs assessing as from my experiences I have walked out of there feeling genuinely worse in my mental health that when I walked in. Terrible. I appreciate the NHS and mental health services are stretched beyond capacity but that doesn’t excuse staff members nonchalant attitude and lack of basic people skills. It’s inexcusable.