We worked in partnership with the six local Healthwatch across West Yorkshire and Harrogate to help us keep people's views at the heart of our priority areas of work, including urgent care, stroke and health optimisation. For our urgent and emergency care engagement, Healthwatch helped us to reach out into a range of communities.
For example in July 2015 it was announced that there would be 8 new 'vanguards' for urgent and emergency care. This included the West Yorkshire Urgent and Emergency Care Network that would oversee, with local partners, the improvement of urgent and emergency care for more than 3 million people across West Yorkshire. As part of this work we wanted to seek people's views about the 'Hear, See and Treat' model of emergency care, which is all about improving the way people access emergency services. You can watch this video to find out more about the 'Hear, See and Treat' model.
In Summer 2016 the six Healthwatch supported public and patient engagement for 'Hear, See and Treat' in partnership with the Yorkshire Ambulance Service. Overall, 147 face-to-face sessions were held across Harrogate and West Yorkshire. In addition to the outreach sessions, Healthwatch used Facebook, Instagram and third party website advertising to promote the video. Over 306,600 people saw the adverts and 137,437 people viewed the video.
To find out more about the engagement process for 'Hear, See and Treat' visit Healthwatch Kirklees's website. You can also view further work carried out by Healthwatch in Autumn 2016 here.