A Strategic review of how Healthwatch Wandsworth uses Enter & View to support its objectives
Our local Healthwatch undertakes 'Enter and View' visits to health and social care services to make recommendations where there are areas for improvement. Read our review of the future direction of the Enter and View programme in Wandsworth.
Local Healthwatch's have the power to undertake 'Enter and View' visits to health and social care services. The aim of these visits is to find out how services are being run and make recommendations where there are areas for improvement. Enter and View is an important tool to provide evidence of the patient/service user experience. Healthwatch Wandsworth needs to decide what should happen next. This review debates the future direction of the Enter and View programme in Wandsworth.
What we did
Our review considered the following:
- The national and local context in which Healthwatch Wandsworth is operating when capturing and representing the experience of patients and service users has changed significantly.
- The Care Quality Commission has launched a new approach to its work, staring with hospital inspections. There is now considerably more emphasis on trying to capture user experience to inform their judgements.
- The creation of Healthwatch England may encourage better local coordination between neighbouring Healthwatch bodies.
- There is not a consistent approach to how findings from internal provider surveys are shared.
- The Department of Health has taken steps to prompt social care providers to improve their own self regulation, but this remains a relatively low profile initiative.
Our conclusions
Taking account of what, Enter and View potential and restrictions, and the complex external environment in which we are working, the future direction of the Enter and View programme in Wandsworth will be according to the following ‘dimensions’:
A – Focus on health vs. focus on social care.
B – Visits to residential/ in-patient services.
C – Bespoke/ special studies vs. regular programmes of visits.
D – Solo Healthwatch studies vs. joint Healthwatch studies.
E – Independent Healthwatch studies vs. collaborative studies with providers or commissioners (or both).
What happens next
We will use this report to inform our future programme of visits. As each visit is completed you will find the reports on our website.
Download the full report
A strategic review of how Healthwatch Wandsworth uses Enter and View to support its objectives
