We have listened carefully across our community engagement, Helpdesk, advocacy, volunteers and Surrey residents to identify and shape our priority areas for the next 3 years.

This process began in November 2022 with a “horizon scanning” session where our volunteers, Board Directors and staff team came together to review what we were hearing from local people; what we knew about system priorities; where we felt there was a risk of people being less well-heard and at risk of health inequality; and where we felt we could have most influence and impact. We then applied a Theory of Change model, examining what we’d want to influence in the long term, and what we need to do to achieve that change over time. Our Local Healthwatch Advisory Group reviewed our proposed priority areas, and our overall Luminus Insight CIC Board approved their recommendations at a meeting in public in April 2023.

At the core of all our work, will be:

  • Agenda free listening and feeding back insight
  • Information and signposting.

We will then also focus some of our work specifically on the following key priorities:

  • Access to primary care
  • Social care
  • Mental health
  • Involvement of people: the listening landscape

In addition we will also ensure that we:

  • Amplify voice within the VCSE (Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise) sector
  • Assess our long term impact.

Our detailed Priorities and Work Plan 2023 – 2026 is in our Reports section of our website which also has reports relating to each of the priorites and our Quarterly impact reports.

Examples of our some of the specific work undertaken within our 4 key priorities, each of which has a dedicated Priority Lead:

Access to primary care

Access to primary care (primary care includes GP practices, pharmacies, NHS dentists) is fundamental to people’s experiences of health and care. The ways in which people access primary care and the availability of services has evolved significantly over recent years, and Surrey residents have consistently shared the impacts this has had on them.

Understanding GP practice services is something we hear a lot about from local people. Along with our volunteers, we are working on a way to provide key information for people to help them get the best from GP practices.

When we are out on engagements, we also support people we meet with understanding and using the NHS App. However, we know that not everyone can use digital access. We continue to raise this to ensure there are options so people have the access they require.

 

Social care

Social care support can change the lives of many Surrey residents. The availability of social care and understanding of what is available can often be complicated for many people who need to access support. Ensuring that people are involved in shaping social care services by sharing experiences and the challenges that people share with us is pivotal in improving services.

We are currently working on a project with Surrey County Council to ensure that people receive the right information if they are planning to pay for their own care in a residential or nursing home in the future.

 

Mental health

Mental Health is intrinsically linked to the health and wellbeing of local people. By ensuring that people’s experiences of mental health services, as well as the impact that wider determinants of health and health inequalities can have on mental health is shared, understood, and acted upon will help to improve services and understanding of the significance of local people’s mental health.

One of the key themes within mental health experiences across the past 12 months has been that people haven’t felt listened to by services that support them. We have been working closely with Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust to improve this. The trust introduced a new ‘learning from experience’ forum to bring together service leads from across the organisation to discuss what they’re hearing through feedback and complaints and how services are responding to this. We met with them in October 2023 to discuss how we could help better shape this forum.

 

Involvement of people

Involving local people in decision making and the design and changes of services will also ensure that services truly serve their local communities. Encouraging system partners to consider and involve local people through co-design, co-production and enabling and empowering local people and communities to lead on making improvements themselves will benefit the communities and people of Surrey.

We have been visiting hospitals across Surrey to advise people about the opportunities that are available for them to have their voices heard. We were also keen to learn how services could help provide better advice and guidance about the methods available for people to share feedback, the support available for concerns they have about their care or provide clearer information about making a complaint. Individual reports and responses from the trusts can be found on our reports page under the Involvement of people reports section.