Conducting an accessibility audit at St John’s Hospice

St John’s Hospice is located on Slyne Road, Lancaster and provides palliative care for patients with life shortening conditions,  both within the hospice and at home.

The hospice team wanted to look at their current accessibility and what improvements could be made to ensure everyone using the hospice can easily access all services; in order to achieve this Healthwatch Lancashire was invited to visit and carry out an accessibility audit.

Two members of the local community kindly gave their time to join Healthwatch Lancashire, as well as one of our colleagues from Healthwatch Westmorland and Furness. The team consisted of the lead, Sue Edwards, a wheelchair user, someone with a visual impairment and someone with a learning disability. This allowed for those with lived experience to be able to provide feedback direct from their perspective.

The team looked at how easy it was to navigate around the centre for those with mobility needs, how clearly signage and information was displayed and readable, if the centre was dementia friendly, what was in place for the Deaf community and interpreter services, health and safety (where appropriate) and any other observations noted during the visit.

A discussion was held with the St John’s Hospice team at the end of the visit where verbal feedback was provided and it became apparent that the majority of findings had already been identified as needing addressing by the hospice team with plans for some works to be carried out in the near future.

Director of Nursing and Quality, at St John’s Hospice, said:

“St Johns Hospice invited Healthwatch to assess how easily the hospice building can be accessed by anyone with a disability. The team were amazing in helping us with this- so enthusiastic and helpful. We will certainly call on the team again in the future to help.”

The Healthwatch Lancashire team would like to thank the St John’s Hospice team for such a lovely warm welcome.

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