News
An affectionate farewell to our chair, Olav Ernstzen
We're sad to be saying goodbye to Olav Ernstzen, who has resigned as chair of Healthwatch Islington. Olav has been closely involved with the...
North Central London Healthwatch Chairs write to Jeremy Hunt
Following the leak of a NHS North Central London (NCL) memo, reported by The Guardian on 21 June, Chairs from Healthwatch in North Central London...
‘Phoning my social worker is much less stressful now’
Angela at home with her cat Honey Angela Dobson first got in touch last year to let us know how hard it was to get through to her social worker by...
Future Matters - new Islington project helps with planning for the last years of life.
Planning for the future could be anything from making a Will to completing an Advance Care Plan, and can remove anxiety about what the future might hold. Future Matters is a new Islington project with trained volunteers who can provide information and support. For example, Anne, in her 80s, had had...
Islington Patient Participation Groups: Locality Meetings planned for March
What's a Patient Participation Group? A Patient Participation Group is a group of patients interested in health and healthcare issues, who want to get involved with the running of their local GP practice. Check the Islington Clinical Commissioning Group website for more details. What is a Locality...
Healthwatch working with community groups in Islington
Healthwatch Signposting and Outreach Officer Sarah Lee (right) chats with Islington Bangladesh Association Advisor Mushina Akhtar at a session we delivered at the Hugh Cubitt Community Centre in early February. 1) We are training staff and volunteers at local voluntary and community organisations...
Care.data - do you need to opt out?
‘Once again the NHS has decided it knows best and is ploughing ahead with plans to share this data whether we like it or not. To make matters worse, the communications around this have been so poor that we are now in the situation where all of us are about to be automatically opted in to a scheme...
How should pharmacy services be developed?
A discussion event is taking place on 27th February 2014 Friends House 173-177 Euston Road London NW1 2BJ Tel: 020 7663 1094/1095. 7.00pm-9.30pm Refreshments will be served from 7pm. The purpose of this event is to stimulate debate in local communities, to shape local strategies for community...
Healthwatch raises concerns over plans to share our personal medical records
Despite a nationwide mail-out campaign, people are still largely in the dark about plans to share their personal medical records. Almost a quarter of the local Healthwatch network have raised concerns in the last few days over NHS England’s attempts to explain the care.data programme, which they...
Interested in Mental Health Services?
Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust provides mental health, social care and substance misuse services to a combined population of 426,000 people – mainly in Camden and Islington. Mental health and substance misuse services are provided to adults (including older adults), people with learning...
Listening to Deaf service users in Islington
In January Healthwatch Islington hosted an event bringing together Deaf service users with staff from the Whittington, Royal Free and University College Hospitals. This was an effort to address some of the negative experiences that Deaf patients have reported when using local hospitals. The meeting...
Healthwatch Undercover: Mystery Shopping
"If there's a problem with their treatment patients want clear and simple information about how to complain and the process should be easy to navigate. A recent national report has called for greater transparency in the way the NHS deals with complaints. We wanted to see how well we were doing in...
Would you like to join Healthwatch Islington's steering group?
Elections for our steering group are taking place in late February/early March. If you're interested, you can find out how to put your name forward here . The steering group leads the work of Healthwatch Islington and supports and monitors our progress. It meets every two months. Here's how two of...
Islington GP out of hours services to be inspected in February
The Care Quality Commission will be inspecting the NHS GP out of hours service provided by Harmoni North Central London next month. If you are an Islington resident and you have made use of the out of hours service then Healthwatch Islington would like to hear from you. We would like to hear...
Spotlight on Volunteering: Healthwatch community ambassador
‘I’d say it’s given me a first-hand view of the evolving needs, and also the challenges associated with social care in the borough.’ Priyanka Bhatia moved to Islington last year. She volunteers as a community ambassador for Healthwatch Islington. Our community ambassadors carry out short interviews...
Urgent Care Review - extended hours for some GP practices is one of the recommendations
This month Islington and Camden Clinical Commissioning Groups have published a summary of progress , complete with a series of interim recommendations, on the joint review of urgent care that began last year. Healthwatch Islington visited the Angel Medical Centre and the Whittington Urgent Care...
Moorfields Eye Hospital to move to Kings Cross
Moorfields Eye Hospital plans to move its main hospital in central London from City Road to the Kings Cross/Euston area. They are now keen to hear wider views on the move, before they make a final decision about a new site. They are running a formal engagement exercise which lasts until Friday 14...
An update on Healthwatch meetings you might have missed
Healthwatch Steering Group meeting - 19 November Simon Galczynski, Director of Adult Social Care and Simon Elkington, Programme Manager for the Adult Social Care Transformation Programme, came to last month's Healthwatch steering group meeting. They gave us an update on developments in adult social...
Books on Prescription - a health service offered by Islington libraries
Books on Prescription The Islington Books on Prescription Scheme has been running for several years. It is a treatment option for people with mild to moderate mental health needs. Doctors and mental health professionals, can 'prescribe' these books by selecting the most appropriate text from the...
Mystery Shoppers assemble at Healthwatch Islington
12 Islington residents have volunteered to become Healthwatch Mystery Shoppers, visiting the 37 GP practices in the borough to see how easy it is to make a complaint. Olav Ernstzen, a member of the mystery shopping team, and chair of Healthwatch Islington, said "If there is a problem with their...
Islington LINk's recommendations on GP appointments are accepted
Back in 2010, many current members of Healthwatch were members of the Islington Local Involvement Network (LINk), which was the organisation that Healthwatch replaced. The Islington LINk championed community involvement in health and social care, much as Healthwatch does now. In October 2010 we...
Healthwatch Islington helps to raise standards of care for older people leaving hospital
The Older Peoples Reference Group enables older people to comment on issues that affect them. Their feedback can then be used to help improve services. Earlier this year, Healthwatch Islington and the Older People’s Reference Group worked together to gather older people’s experiences of leaving...
A new approach to inspecting specialist mental health services
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) checks whether hospitals, care homes, GPs, dentists, and services delivered at home are meeting national standards. The Care Quality Commission have announced that they will now put more emphasis on inspecting the care that people with mental health problems...
Healthwatch: An insider's story
' There's no point being a person that says you hate this, you hate that, but you don't do anything about it - you’ve got to be involved on the inside to make things better .' Rose McDonald supports Islington residents with issues around health and housing. She helps tenants to obtain modifications...
Healthwatch Islington publishes report on urgent care
Back in September our Enter and View volunteers visited the Whittington Urgent Care Centre and the Angel Medical Centre to find out why people were using the centres. The broad conclusions of the visits are as follows: 'This was only a small sample of self-selected respondents who took part in our...
Urgent and emergency care - Healthwatch England gives its view
Anna Bradley, Chair of Healthwatch England issued the following statement on 13 November (apologies for the late posting): Responding to NHS England's report on urgent and emergency care , Anna Bradley, Chair of health and social care consumer champion Healthwatch England, said: "Many people are...
‘Avoidable’ emergency admissions among the elderly increasing
More than half a million people aged 65 and over were admitted as an emergency to hospital with potentially avoidable conditions in the last year Almost one in ten of all people aged 75 and over were admitted as an emergency to hospital with potentially avoidable conditions The number of ‘avoidable...
Changes to GP contract important step towards more consumer focused health service
Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Health, announced at the end of last week that under changes to their contract with the NHS for 2014/15, GPs will ensure that patients aged 75 or over will get all the treatment they need for physical and mental conditions. Other key changes introduce more...
