NHS Long Term Plan – What Would You Do?
The government are investing £23bn a year into the NHS until 2023.
Early in 2019 Healthwatch across the country were asked by NHS England to engage discussions with their local communities about the NHS 10 Year Plan to find out what local people want from services.
Feedback will support local NHS services to invest and implement the right support for people in Stockport.
Healthwatch Stockport worked in partnership with Healthwatch in Greater Manchester colleagues to engage with local people. Each area engaged the general population on the main topics within the 10 year plan as well as focusing on a topic that was a priority for Healthwatch Stockport. Each area held focus groups and ran a Greater Manchester wide survey for people to take part and let us know their thoughts and suggestions.
Findings from across the 10 Boroughs of Greater Manchester have been collated and the reports can be found below
NHS long term plan reports
Healthwatch Stockport chose dementia to focus on as it was a priority identified by our engagement work. We ran 2 focus groups and spoke to 20 participants about their experience and suggestions for services that support people with Dementia.
Main findings
Participants felt there was a reluctance from GPs to refer to the Dementia Assessment Clinic and they had to be persistent in getting a referral. The pre-diagnostic checks at the GP were also felt to be too general and people fell through the net until they felt almost at crisis point. Once at the Assessment Clinic people found it to be a positive experience.
People held the community and voluntary sector in high regard in relation to information and signposting. They felt the information was more helpful and gave a positive light on the future with dementia rather than NHS information which was seen as too pragmatic and negative.
Carers felt information specifically for them was poor and hard to find.
People were really grateful for the follow up treatment at the assessment clinic and felt it was a vital service which worked really well.
However carers were often shocked and ill-informed about the side effects of some of the medication that their loved ones had to take.
People raised the importance of wider and community group support such as help with getting to appointments and financial assistance and with keeping up to date with new services. The positive peer support at the support groups we visited was clearly evident and people said they felt supported and were treated with empathy.
The full dementia report across Greater Manchester can be found on our NHS long term plan reports page
Healthwatch Stockport receives highly commended recognition at national award
Read how our work with Healthwatch in Greater Manchester has won awards at the Healthwatch National Awards in Birmingham.
Read the reports
What we will do with the information gathered
The Information has been shared with Stockport CCG to help inform their local strategy.
We will collate the initial findings with the findings from our further work around dementia. We will produce a full report at the end of December.
We want to continue to hear your views about local dementia support services. Do they work for you, how accessible is local information about services and do you know where to go to receive help? If you or a loved one is living with dementia either in your own home or a care home please get in touch
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