What we’re hearing about Guildford & Waverley – November 2023

We have identified a number of themes from our conversations with residents:

• During our visits to community locations, we have heard about the support being given to residents by community organisations.
• We spoke to young people in Farncombe about where they would turn to if they have questions about health services.
• People attending the Hongkongers group in Guildford have told us how language barriers can affect their access to care.
• We have heard that when people are receiving care, they are often happy with the quality, however, communication could be improved.
• People have also shared their experiences of perceived stigma related to their needs, care at Royal Surrey County hospital, receiving care at home, trying to access general practice, community pharmacies and vaccinations.

Our recommendations are:

1. We recommend that the Alliance considers how to encourage young people to use reliable sources for information about their health.
2. We recommend that information about local services is made available in Cantonese in order to help this community understand and access services more easily.
3. There are a number of examples where more effective communication with people using services would improve their overall experience. We recommend that the Alliance considers how to improve messaging, that is going out to people using services whilst also considering feedback on what currently works well.
4. During one of our visits to a community location, there was a first aid emergency that we were able to assist with. We recommend that the support and assistance offered to community groups across Guildford and Waverley is reviewed in order to enable them to offer the support that their service users may need.
5. We recommend that Guildford and Waverley Alliance consider and share any other actions related to the experiences shared within this report.

The response we received from the Alliance was:

Guildford and Waverley Health and Care Alliance welcomes the opportunity to work with Healthwatch Surrey to gain insights into what our local population are telling them about our services. We appreciate that the feedback is anecdotal but that it does provide us with some themes for us to consider.

The current report includes five recommendations which we are taking forward as an Alliance. Below is our initial response to the recommendations which we will work through in the coming months.

• We recommend that the Alliance considers how to encourage young people to use reliable sources for information about their health.
  • We will work with our Children and Young People Commissioning Team to identify a list of reliable resources and will share this information actively with our local population, targeting those areas where children and young people are more present.
• We recommend that information about local services is made available in Cantonese in order to help this community understand and access services more easily.
  • Royal Surrey County Hospital have access to an online translation service and can access face to face translation support when needed. Primary Care mainly offers language translation over the telephone but can arrange face to face support in some circumstances. We will continue to raise awareness of this service with practices.
• There are a number of examples where more effective communication with people using services would improve their overall experience. We recommend that the Alliance considers how to improve messaging, that is going out to people using services whilst also considering feedback on what currently works well.
  • Within primary care we are providing a package of support to modernise general practice. This includes an improved interface between general practice websites and the NHS App allowing for consistency of messaging, a New Cloud Based Telephony system allowing for clearer signposting to the right services depending on people’s needs and ensuring that whether patients come through via phone, website, app or face to face that they receive the same experience and communications.
  • The national requirements of the Primary Care Recovery plan are also driving key areas of improvement in the interface between primary and secondary care (particularly with discharge summaries and onward referrals) which support better patient care and information.
  • Royal Surrey has triangulated the feedback in this report with their other patient experience data and this will be used for areas of patient experience improvement. Currently this includes: appointment communication, accessibility and cancer outpatient environment
• During one of our visits to a community location, there was a first aid emergency that we were able to assist with. We recommend that the support and assistance offered to community groups across Guildford and Waverley is reviewed in order to enable them to offer the support that their service users may need.
  • Voluntary Action South West Surrey supports the voluntary & community sector in Guildford and Waverley. They play a role in cascading relevant information out, signposting to relevant training and can advise on policies. Community groups are able to contact Voluntary Action South West Surrey direct for further information.
• We recommend that Guildford and Waverley Alliance consider and share any other actions related to the experiences shared within this report.
  • We note that some feedback is provided around community pharmacy. There are significant workforce issues within pharmacy, with recruitment being the biggest challenge. We will continue to support our local partners to address these issues.

Guildford and Waverley Health and Care Alliance are committed to working with Healthwatch Surrey to review progress on actions being taken forward on a regular basis and to jointly develop a plan for where future engagement activities could be focussed.