1. Advice and Information -

    Four questions staff should ask you or a loved one about your oral health if you’re a care home resident, according to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence quick guide.
  2. Advice and Information -

    Do you or a loved one need help with social care? Read the article below and find out answers to key questions about who can access adult social care and how to pay for it.
  3. Advice and Information -

    Do you or a loved one need help with social care? Healthwatch England has put together a useful guide about who can access adult social care and how to pay for it.
  4. Report -

    Part of the local Healthwatch programme is to carry out Enter and View visits. Local Healthwatch representatives carry out these visits to health and social care services to find out how they are being run and make recommendations where there are areas for improvement.
  5. Advice and Information -

    Part of the local Healthwatch programme is to carry out Enter and View visits. Local Healthwatch representatives carry out these visits to health and social care services to find out how they are being run and make recommendations where there are areas for improvement. The Health and Social Care Act allows local Healthwatch authorised representatives to observe service delivery and talk to service users, their families and carers on premises such as hospitals, residential homes, GP practices, dental surgeries, optometrists and pharmacies. Enter and View visits can happen if people tell us there is a problem with a service but, equally, they can occur when services have a good reputation – so we can learn about and share examples of what they do well from the perspective of people who
    experience the service first hand.
  6. Report -

    A joint report with Healthwatch Newcastle on what urgent care means to local people.
  7. News -

    Gateshead Council has launched a £200,000 Digital Transformation and Support Fund to support small and medium sized voluntary and community sector (VCS) organisations to identify the training and digital innovation their organisations need to help them grow and thrive.
  8. Report -

    In early 2020 we worked with The Gateshead Housing Company. We gathered experiences of their service users on accessing Arabic interpreting and translation services for health appointments in Gateshead.
  9. Report -

    We ran a questionnaire during spring 2020 to find out how young people felt about the way health professionals treated them. We used ‘You’re Welcome’ criteria and feedback as guidance (quality criteria set out by the Department of Health and Social Care).
  10. Report -

    This report builds on our ‘Don’t box me in’ report. Young people and their parents/carers were asked how easy or difficult it was for young people to access health services in Newcastle and Gateshead.

  11. Report -

    Healthwatch Gateshead, working in partnership with the Northeast and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board (ICB), engaged with children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and their families (CYP&F) to understand their experiences across education, health, and social services. The feedback from the CYP&F will feed into the joint commissioning strategy in Gateshead to help ensure the strategy reflects local needs.
  12. Report -

    It has been a contractual requirement for each GP practice since April 2016 to have an active and involved Patient Participation Group (PPG).

    We wanted to create a best practice award for PPGs aims to increase and improve the involvement of patients in their GP practice. Several GP practices in Newcastle and Gateshead participated in our pilot from autumn 2019 to February 2021. This interim report outlines what we did.
  13. Report -

    Our annual report for 2021–22 outlines Healthwatch activities over the year to understand and improve people's experiences of social care and health services in Gateshead.