What's new from Healthwatch Calderdale

How to make a complaint to the NHS about primary care services (GP, pharmacy, dentist, optician)

July 10, 2023
UPDATE FROM NHS ENGLAND Information provided by NHS England, 1 July 2023: You have the right to complain about any aspect of NHS care, treatment or service, which is written into the NHS Constitution on GOV.UK.  From 1 July 2023, the way members of the public make a complaint about primary care services to the commissioner…

Healthwatch Kirklees and Healthwatch Calderdale AGM

February 15, 2023

We’re hosting our Healthwatch Kirklees and Healthwatch Calderdale 2023 AGM today.     Below is the agenda: Introductions and apologies … Read more

Our Engagement Team Give Out Winter Care Packs in Halifax

January 30, 2023

                         Last week, our Engagement and Information Officers, Alexandra … Read more

Helpful Information

Cost of Living Support

If you live in Calderdale, here is a pdf booklet to help support with the cost of living:

An image showing the front page of the Worrying about money pdf support document

< Click here for the ‘Worrying About Money’ pdf >   

Are you interested in learning new skills through volunteering?

Are you someone who’s friendly and approachable and can work as part of a team?

Is it important to you to support other people to make positive changes and have their voices heard? Do you enjoy learning new things? Could you support Healthwatch Calderdale by sharing your skills and enthusiasm and help to make positive changes in your local area?

Find out more

Are you looking for more general advice about health care services?

Family healthcareFind links to information about finding a dentist, registering for a GP, accessing your medical records and much more.

Helpful information and useful links

Reports


Local Healthwatch across Yorkshire and the Humber published a report in 2019 on the health and social care experiences of people with hypermobility spectrum disorder (HSD) and hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (hEDS). The issues were then raised locally by Healthwatch Calderdale, which led the work nationally via an adjournment debate in the House of Commons and on social media (2019). At this point, Healthwatch Calderdale started to receive feedback directly from people across the country sharing their own experiences of NHS care for these types of hypermobility syndromes.

While we are unable to support people outside of the Calderdale area, we decided to collate the national feedback as an update to our work as it shows the issues we discovered in our work in Yorkshire and the Humber are also being experienced in other parts of the country.

In this report you’ll find:

Main themes
GPs lack of knowledge about the condition.
• Difficulties obtaining a referral and diagnosis issues
• Poor access to NHS care and feedback on private assessments
• Life impact and lack of joined-up support for children
• Ideas for improvement

Hypermobility National work

Most recent
Joint Calderdale and Kirklees annual report for 2022/23 here: Healthwatch Kirklees and Healthwatch Calderdale – Annual Report 2021/22

By Healthwatch Kirklees and Healthwatch Calderdale
annual reports

Over the last 10 years, Healthwatch across West Yorkshire (including Craven in North Yorkshire) have worked hard to alert NHS providers and commissioners to the significant gaps in dentistry services. In this report we’ve included a timeline summarising the work delivered around NHS dentistry by Healthwatch, in which you can see that we have repeatedly raised our concerns to various partners involved in the delivery and commissioning of NHS dental services. Our most significant successes have been working with local MPs to increase the number of units of dental activity commissioned areas of the region on a temporary basis. In this report you’ll find more information on impact our work has had as well as
• Key issues
• How we’ve tried to address these issues
• Changes we’d like to see

By Healthwatch working together in West Yorkshire
Dentistry West Yorkshire