2022 was a busy year for Healthwatch Camden. The year started with continuing fears over the pandemic and the increase of COVID strains, and ended with many NHS workers striking and rising cost of living pressures. Throughout it all, we have strived to continue to be Camden’s health and social care champion. Here’s a little insight into what we got up to in 2022.
We met with the local community to discuss local need
This year we went to plenty of social and health events ran in our local community. We talked to you about what your biggest concerns were with your local services, which were:
- Problems accessing dentistry
- Ambulance waiting times
- More awareness on women’s health issues
- GP appointments
- Hospital waiting times
We also provided information resources on a variety of local and national issues, such as Cost of Living support and the local changes from the Health and Care Act 2022.
We plan to make many more of these events in 2023 as events return to in-person. See you there!
We started initiatives to improve local health
Camden is an extremely diverse borough, and with that comes a large amount of health inequalities, from everything to language, race, even internet access. In our work with local community groups, we held events with local GPs to talk about a variety of health issues, including:
- Vaccine myths
- Hypertension
- Omicron and COVID
We hope to continue this work in 2023 by running initiatives and events for health issues such as bowel & cervical cancers, diabetes, and many more. We are proud of our work with local community partners, and if you are a community organisation and would like to work with us, email us at info@healthwatchcamden.co.uk
We published reports and held local services to account
Healthwatch Camden do a lot of work behind the scenes to gather insight on people’s experiences accessing health and social care services. We then use this insight to create recommendations and feedback to the service providers on a regular basis. You can read these in the ‘reports’ section of our website. Here’s a list of the reports we issued this year:
- Experiences of Long Covid in North Central London (in collaboration with other local Healthwatch)
- Birth Stories: Experiences of Maternity Services in North Central London
- Urgent and Emergency Care Services (snapshot report)
We helped the public find the support and services they need
You can contact Healthwatch Camden over phone and email and we can help signpost you to the services you need. The most common inquiries we received this year were:
- Dentists taking new NHS patients
- Issuing complaints with your GP or hospital
- Walk-in vaccine centres in Camden
- Information on adult social care
If you need signposting to relevant services in Camden, please see how on our Contact Us page.
We launched our 4-year Strategic Plan
A large project we undertook this year was the creation of our Strategic Plan for 2022-2026: ‘Championing a Healthier Future’.
This plan details our vision and goals for the next four years. We highlight how we’ll help to tackle issues in local health and social care, in partnership and collaboration with colleagues, stakeholders and most importantly, residents.
With challenges and changes in health and care, we want to reinforce that it’s Healthwatch Camden’s ambition to inform, reassure, and empower residents towards having the best possible information, prevention and outcomes in health and social care. Of course, this goal can only be fully realised with the collaboration of our many partners and stakeholders.
You can read the full plan, or in easy read format here.
Stay up to date on what we do this year
We’ve already got lots of plans on how we can continue to be a champion of local health and social care services, and be a face for Camden’s community. To stay up to date, subscribe to our newsletter or follow us on our social media (@healthwatchcam on Twitter and Instagram).