Hannah from Healthwatch shared the following message with the Communities of Interest Network:
There is a drive in the city around what health and care services do to improve the health inequalities in the city. We know that the majority of the inequality that people experience is linked to key issues such as housing, income, education but there is a real commitment and desire from health and care services to also understand and play their part about what they can do to better reduce the gap around health inequalities.
A group has developed in the city to develop this thinking, the Health Inequalities group (THIG), and is working to support the health and care providers of care in Leeds to understand what the statistics tell us about inequalities, help them understand inequalities but we would also like to bring together the insight you have around what is it that could help the community you work with. We would like to know:
- From your work with your communities, what are the 3 main issues/barriers that people experience in health and care services?
- How might health and care services do things differently?
- What might be the solutions?
It might be around accessing services, it might be that the services that are on offer don’t meet the needs of your community. For example Carers Leeds have told us that having to ring for an appointment at 8am creates issues for carers as they are busy caring at this time. We have heard from refugees and asylum seeker orgs that it would be great if GPs had more time to explain things in consultations as language is a big barrier. We have heard that some people with sight loss are not having their communication needs recorded so NHS services use inappropriate communication methods, leading to missed appointments etc.
How to talk to us
In terms of feeding back the information, it would be great if you could email [email protected] or give Anna a ring on 0113 898 0035. Or we could call you to take down the details, whatever way is easiest to feed in this information. Feel free to also signpost us to any insight/feedback work you have done on this or reports that you are aware of that have been produced too.
By when
This is an ongoing piece of work that we want to influence, but we will be talking to the initial findings at the next meeting of the Health Inequalities group on Tuesday 8 December so would appreciate the information by then if at all possible. We would also love it if you might be interested in being part of the session on the 8 December.
Comments are closed.