Month: March 2017

I’ve been spending time recently in the new St Pancras and Somers Town Living Centre, which is just down the road from our offices in Ossulston Street. It’s great to see a project that has been talked about and thought about for so long actually get going. Our contribution is to be part of the signposting service there, and we’re really pleased to be working in partnership with Voluntary Action Camden to support the development of the signposting service.

On 9 February our volunteer Robert, did our first annual Patient Led Assessment of Care Environments (PLACE) visit at Great Ormond Street hospital.

We value our volunteers, they’re our lifeblood and they help us with all our activities. Many, like Robert assist us in visiting service providers to make sure that services are up to standard and the environment supports patients’ privacy and dignity.

On Friday 24 March Healthwatch Camden jointly hosted a round table discussion to evaluate the work we’ve been doing on residential care homes for older people in partnership with the national charity for older people – Independent Age.

We already blogged that Healthwatch Camden volunteers visited every residential care home in Camden to talk to residents, relatives and staff. See what we did and why in this blog post.

On 22 March Shelly Khan, our Community Engagement Manager visited the West Hampstead Women’s Centre (WHWC) to talk about Healthwatch Camden and what we do in the local community. The centre provides a supportive and safe women only space, where women who feel marginalised can prosper.

In February Victoria Armitage, our Project Officer, attended the Camden Disability Action (CDA) Annual General Meeting and Shelly Khan our Engagement Manager attended Voluntary Action Camden’s (VAC) AGM.
It was a chance for us to listen first hand to people in the local community and find out which health and social care issues they think are important.

When we went out and about last year to ask local people about your priorities for our work (our Your Voice Counts ) you told us that the link between poor housing and poor health was a big concern.

We’re planning our work for 2017 onwards. We’d like your views on our plan.
We already know some of the priority areas we will be looking at, they are:
Housing and health –
We know from our previous consultation that there are clear links between poor and insecure housing and poor physical and mental health in Camden. We’re planning new work to highlight the impact private rental housing has on physical and mental health.
Service change –

Sustainability is high on my concerns just now. It is one of the NHS buzzwords of the year – we are asked to take part in shaping “Sustainability and Transformation Plans”.