Healthwatch Brighton & Hove is the local consumer champion for health and social care.
We listen to what local residents like about their services and what they think needs to be improved, no matter how big or small the issue. Where possible we will let them know when changes are planned to services in our community and help them have a say. We also encourage those in charge of local care to involve locals when changes are being planned to services.
People's views come first - especially those who find it hardest to be heard.
Healthwatch Brighton and Hove was set up on April 2013, with a role to represent the views of the people that use health and social care services in our city. We are a community interest company (CIC), a non-charitable limited company which exists to benefit a community or with a view to pursuing a social purpose, rather than to make a profit for shareholders.
Though commissioned and funded by Brighton and Hove City Council, we are independent of both the council and the NHS.
Local Healthwatch has 7 key functions to fulfil:
1. Obtain the views of people about local health and care services, and makes those views known to those involved in commissioning, providing and monitoring health and care services
2. Promote and enables the involvement of local people in the commissioning and provision of local health and care services and how they are monitored
3. Recommend investigation or special review of services, either via Healthwatch England, or directly to the Care Quality Commission
4. Provide advice, signposting and information to the public about accessing health and care services and help them to make informed choices about which services to use
5. Write reports and make recommendations about how health and care services could or should be improved and ask for responses from providers
6. Play a role in the preparation of the statutory Joint Strategic Needs Assessments and Joint Health and Well being Strategies on which local commissioning decisions will be made
7. Provide an Independent Complaints Advocacy Service which empowers anyone who wishes to resolve a complaint about healthcare commissioned and/or provided by the NHS in England
