Volunteers play a vital role in helping people have their say in health and social care. Volunteering with Healthwatch Waltham Forest can help you develop skills, gain experience and make a difference in your community.
We listen to what local people think of health and social care services and share their views with professionals to make services better. Here is a link to an article in the Waltham Forest Echo about our report on three inadequate (as rated by Care Quality Commission) GP practices in the Leyton area.
We help local people to find the health and care services and support they need.
We run, co-ordinate and support events, projects and activities to build strong networks with the local community and health and care providers.
We need to be run by and reflect local people and the local community. To do all that we need your help.
The main thing we’re asking Community Influencers to do is to give feedback on the health and care services that you use and to encourage others to do the same. You can also choose to help voice the views we gather and take part in designing services and local health information when the chance comes up. It’s up to you how much time you give, and we promise to show you what difference you make and, where we can, to provide you with a financial reward in terms of a thank you for your time. So what might it involve?
- We’d love you to provide feedback directly on this website’s Feedback Centre.
- We might ask you to complete a survey on a service that you said you were interested in or use e.g. your GP Practice, the diabetes service or childhood vaccinations etc.
- Then we might ask you if you’d like to come to a focus group to talk about the survey results and develop recommendations to improve the service.
- Next we might ask if you’d like to work with the people who are responsible for buying or providing that service to work together to design the service to better meet local people’s needs within the budget provided.
- You could then be involved in the group who decides who will deliver the new service.
This is just one example, there will be other opportunities across health and social care including: reading and commenting on the information that services provide for local people and suggesting how they might be improved, helping Healthwatch and partners to set their priorities for community involvement, undertaking training to gather feedback from local people on their experience and needs and going on visits to places like hospitals and GPs to talk to other local people.