Annual Report, 2024-25

Headlines by Ash Verma, Healthwatch Harrow Chair:

Community engagement, influencing delivery and maximising on limited resources remains a hallmark of Healthwatch Harrow. We continued to punch way above our resources during another year of challenges faced by the national and local health and social care landscape. 

Community Voice 

4,100 people told us about their experiences of health and social care and 70,000 items of service user feedback were processed and analysed. We published six newsletters, reaching over 700 people, organised a Community Forum and published 35 reports on such matters as hospitals and health, social isolation, GP services, and general experiences of community and healthcare services. 

Making a Difference

The evidence from our trend analysis reports and feedback from residents and patients continued to shape the Trust’s priorities. Similarly, our reports provided evidence for GPs and primary care networks to identify surgeries with best practice and those that required improvements. Our collaboration with the Borough Based Partnership led to front line staff being trained to support Romanians and refugees in the Borough to understand the NHS system and access services. 

Our Commitment 

We will monitor progress on the new framework developed by our regional ICB, following our involvement with other Healthwatch with over 1,000 residents, for measuring success, focusing on outcomes for local people, to ensure that it makes a difference to residents’ key priorities.