Award Winning Company at Basepoint Luton
Congratulations to Healthwatch Luton, the winner of the ‘Helping more people have their say’ at the 2019 Healthwatch Network Awards.
Healthwatch Luton has been recognised as the winner in this year’s Healthwatch Network Awards for in the ‘Helping more people have their say’ category.
Healthwatch Luton spoke with over 400 young people in Luton throughout 2017-2018 on their health and care experiences, leading to Luton’s first ever ‘Young Person’s Event’ held at St George’s Square in 2018, created in co-production with Luton Clinical Commissioning Group. Using young artists in Luton town to attract young people, over 100 people attended on the day.
Healthwatch Luton ran forums with over 200 young people in 2017, asking them about their experiences of health and social care, to ensure the voice of the young people was being heard. The main themes and trends identified a need to have access to more health and social care information, but in a setting that was not a typical educational manner. Based on this Healthwatch Luton embarked on a collaboration with Luton Clinical Commissioning Group, creating the first ever Luton’s Young Person Event. Young people of Luton were able to showcase their talents on stage and local organisations both statutory and voluntary were invited to network and support young people in attendance. As a result young people in Luton were made aware of what safeguarding was, what local organisations were available to them and how to access them, and gather more views from the young people of Luton.
Every year, the Healthwatch Network Awards celebrate the many positive stories of how the local Healthwatch network is helping to make care better for thousands of people. The awards are an opportunity to demonstrate where local Healthwatch worked within the local community to make sure health and social care services meet people's needs.
Healthwatch listen to what people like about the NHS and social care and what needs to be improved. Their views are shared with health and care professionals, so that services can understand what people and their families want from care.
These awards recognise how people’s feedback is vital to improving services. Thanks to the many hundreds of thousands of people who shared their experiences with Healthwatch last year. This has led to positive changes to the way local health and care services are run.
The local Healthwatch shortlisted for 2019 Healthwatch Network Awards were picked from almost 150 award entries.
The winner from each category was chosen by a panel of external judges and announced at the Healthwatch England Annual Conference on 1 October 2019.