Reflecting on 2024 at Healthwatch Lancashire

Reflecting on 2024 at Healthwatch Lancashire With Jodie Carney, Healthwatch Lancashire Manager

As the new year approaches, this is the perfect opportunity to reflect on the work that Healthwatch Lancashire has done in 2024. Although it is impossible to recall everything our team has done this year, I have picked out a few highlights I would like to share with you all.

This year we have continued our Enter and View programme and our team has focused attention on five service areas, GP Practices, Care Homes, Pharmacies, Blood Clinics and Rehabilitations. With every Enter and View, we report on what we have observed and most importantly what people using the service have told us to help celebrate good practice and support with service improvement.

Some of our core projects this year include:

• Who Can Help Me: Exploring the experiences of carers supporting people withing a neurological condition in Lancashire
• Our Voice in Health and Social Care: The experiences of British Sign Language Users living in Lancashire. Our full report will be available in 2025.
• Talk to Us: Exploring Women’s Health in Lancashire. Our fully report will be available in 2025. 

These projects, along with general engagement have meant that our fantastic team have engaged with over 5500 people and highlighted people’s feedback throughout our reports to help shape health and social care throughout Lancashire.

In August, we had the pleasure of the Chief Executive, Louise Ansari visiting. We headed to Clitheroe Market for a ‘pop-up’, despite the weather, this was an opportunity to connect with the local community and provide Louise a glimpse of Lancashire. We received excellent feedback from Louise who thoroughly enjoyed her time with our team.

As a team, we welcomed two new roles, a Research & Data Team Leader (Lewis) and a Communications and Administrative Co-Ordinator (Cora). Both have been a great addition to the team and have exciting ideas on how to showcase more of the work we do at Healthwatch Lancashire.

Our volunteers continued to shine and have supported our enter and views programme and project work. I would like to say a huge thank you to our volunteers, all of their hard work and contributions have been invaluable.

We currently host four Maternity and Neonatal Voices Partnerships (MNVPs) across Lancashire and South Cumbria, they are the independent voice for families accessing maternity and neonatal services in their area. It has been a pleasure working with the Leads for these partnerships and this year we have welcomed an engagement lead for East Lancashire MNVP (Tessa) and a team leader for the project within Healthwatch Lancashire (Caroline). Both will no doubt build on ensuring that families across Lancashire and South Cumbria are listened to and driving service change.

I have been amazed by everyone’s drive and determination this year, and I cannot wait to see what we achieve next year.