Healthwatch Bracknell Forest provides administration for the Bracknell Forest Mental Health Forum on behalf of the Community Mental Health Team.

The mental health forum is for anyone involved locally with mental health and it aims to capture views and share updates about local health and social care. This includes people who use mental health services, their carers and health and social care professionals.

Click here to view meeting the records.

Healthwatch Bracknell Forest is recruiting members of the public to join the team of volunteers who help promote and carry out Healthwatch Bracknell Forest activities and functions. You know your neighbourhood; you have relatives, friends, neighbours, colleagues and a whole network of contacts who you could ask for their ideas about how to improve services for everyone. You are the local experts!

Joining the Healthwatch Bracknell Forest team will give you a great opportunity to help make a real difference to delivering service improvements and benefits for communities across Bracknell Forest.

We are currently recruiting for three roles, you maybe intrested in one or more of them.

Community Champion - Community Champions help to promote Healthwatch Bracknell Forest and its work within the local community. This could involve running a promotion stall at a local event, collecting the views from people you meet at your clubs and groups, delivering leaflets and posters to places such as local GP surgeries and, in some cases, delivering a small presentation to a local group.

Authorised Representative for Enter and View - One of the statutory powers Healthwatch Bracknell Forest has is ‘Enter & View’. Representatives, ideally in groups of three (professional, expert patient and lay member) can enter and view health and social care facilities and services. This may be because we have been invited by the service provider or because members of the public/partner organisations (such as the Care Quality Commission - CQC) have highlighted areas of concern.

Project Support Board - The project support board aims to consist of 6 local voluntary sector organisations, 3 public members, 3 experts by expierience and an independent chair. The role of the members of the Project Support Boards is to provide feedback, challenge and question the health and social care system and shapre our work program.

For further details please see the application pack below.

Your application can be returned by post or by email, we look forward to receiving your application. If you would like a printed copy please let us know.

Healthwatch Bracknell Forest is run by a Project Management Board which is made up of representatives from the consortium organisations. There is also public representatives on this board who are elected or co-opted annually.

In 2016 we held elections for public representatives 3 nominations were received, we asked members of the public for objections to these nominations, none were received and these members became our public representatives at our public meeting held on 12 April 2016 till 31 March 2017.

Due to the government elections and the restrictions this places on local Healthwatch and charities, and a significant decrease in future funding, going forward public representation will be co-opted, should you wish to be considered please let us know.

Healthwatch Voices is a network for community and voluntary sector organisations to share their experiences and issues with health and social care services in Bracknell Forest. The information collected forms part of our overall work plan and is fed back to providers and commissioners of both health and social care services.

Healthwatch Voices Aims to:

• Represent and input the views of local people, including young people, the elderly and harder to reach people in the community
• Provide constructive comments and feedback of issues raised
• Discuss and raise priorities and issues that you would like Healthwatch Bracknell Forest to action
• Distribute and gather information
• Help shape and develop information being gathered and have direct input into health and social care priorities for all in Bracknell Forest

To join the mailing list please signup your organistaion here.

What is a JSNA?

The Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) is the means by which Public Health assess the current and future health healthcare and wellbeing needs of the local population in Bracknell Forest. It is an assessment of local, current and future health and social care needs that could be met by local authorities, Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), the NHS and other partners. It will inform Bracknell Forests’ Joint Health and Wellbeing Board, which has a duty and responsibility to identify key priorities to improve the Health and Wellbeing for people living in Bracknell Forest. The Health and Wellbeing Board produces a health and wellbeing strategy which is based on the needs identified within a JSNA.

See the JSNA website for more details.

The General Osteopathic Council work with the public and osteopathic profession to promote patient safety by registering qualified professionals, and setting, maintaining and developing standards of osteopathic practice and conduct. 

• Would you like to be involved in developing information for patients and the public?
• Are you interested in standards of osteopathic practice?

The Patient and Public Partnership Group enables them to work more closely with patients to improve their services, better protect the public, and provide patients and the public with the information they need about osteopathic practice.

A scam is any unwanted e-mail, letter, telephone call or visitor who make false promises if they are given money in some way. Some examples are:

• fake lotteries, prize draws or sweepstakes
• clairvoyants (someone who says they can tell you your future), computer scams and romance scams

The criminals try and trick people with flashy, important looking documents or websites and are very convincing! They will always ask for money in some way: either a money payment, or to post something or make an expensive phone call. Doorstep Scams are also crimes carried out by bogus callers and rogue traders who call, often uninvited, at people's home pretending to be official businesses.

Scams affect the lives of millions of people across the UK! People who are scammed often experience loneliness, shame and social isolation.

If you access this link, scroll down and select the first blue circled called ‘Friends – find our more’, it will allow you to access a really useful and interactive short online learning module (the green rectangle). It is good fun and informative at the same time so please spread the word, spread your awareness and make people safer!

South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SCAS) is calling for young people aged 14 and over and BME groups to complete their anonymous survey, please tell them about your experience and/or knowledge of the local health services.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is inviting people to give their views on plans to evolve its approach to regulating independent healthcare services in England to ensure a more targeted, responsive and collaborative approach.

The proposals, published today (Friday 26 January) set out how CQC intends to develop its next phase of regulation for independent healthcare services, such as independent acute hospitals, independent doctors and clinics, and independent substance misuse services. They include:

• How CQC plans to introduce quality ratings following its inspections for those independent healthcare services that it was given the power to rate by the Department of Health and Social Care last month.
• Changes to the regulation of independent healthcare services, including the scheduling and intensity of its inspections and how CQC will monitor providers and gather its intelligence on an ongoing basis.

Commenting on the proposals, Sir David Behan, Chief Executive at CQC, said: “CQC’s ratings of health and care services are incredibly important in providing the public with assurance about the quality and safety of the services that they use and also in helping providers to improve.

“The proposals we are consulting on today clarify how we plan to award ratings to those providers that we have been given additional powers to rate following our inspections, such as cosmetic surgery, termination of pregnancy and substance misuse clinics, independent doctors – including those that provide primary care online – and independent community healthcare services.

“The consultation also sets out our plans to evolve our current approach to regulating independent healthcare services to be more focused, targeted and intelligence driven in line with our strategy and the approach we have introduced already for NHS hospitals, adult social care services and primary care.

“This is the third in a series of documents in which we have asked the public, providers, professionals and stakeholders for their views to help develop the ‘next phase’ of regulation.

“Our proposals are based on the learning from our inspections of the sector over the past three years and feedback from independent healthcare providers about our regulation, which will continue to focus on ensuring people receive safe, high-quality and compassionate care and on encouraging improvement. We welcome the further feedback that this consultation will bring.”

Key proposals outlined in the consultation are:

• Ratings of outstanding, good, requires improvement and inadequate following inspections of those independent providers that CQC now has additional powers to rate. Ratings will be awarded for whether services are safe, effective, responsive, caring and well-led at overall service and location level using the same ratings principles used for all other services.
• Improved systems for gathering intelligence to monitor the quality of care including the development of ‘CQC Insight’– a data monitoring tool currently in use for NHS hospital trusts and primary care providers – to help inform decisions about when and what to inspect, and a new regular provider information request to support and feed into CQC’s monitoring of services in between inspections.
• The phased introduction of a more targeted approach to inspection that is more responsive to risk and improvement and involves greater focus on leadership – as CQC has introduced already for NHS trusts, adult social care and primary care providers.
• Changes to the core services that CQC assesses during its inspections of independent acute hospitals and community health services. This includes assessing and rating ‘outpatients’ and ‘diagnostic imaging’ services separately and combining the existing core services of ‘medicine’ and ‘surgery’ into a single ‘inpatient’ core service to better reflect the way these services are organised and managed at many independent hospitals. It also includes introducing ‘community single specialty’ as a new core service for some independent community healthcare services.

The consultation is open for eight weeks closing on Friday 23 March 2018. CQC will formally respond to the feedback provided later in the year.

CQC has already inspected and rated every independent acute and mental health service in England. A national report on the findings from its inspection programme of all specialist mental health services was published in July 2017. A further report that brings together the findings from its inspections of independent acute hospitals will publish in the coming weeks.

NHS National Institute for Health Research

What is a Patient Research Ambassador?
A Patient Research Ambassador is someone who promotes health research from a patient point of view. They could be a patient, service user, carer or lay person who is enthusiastic about health research and is willing to communicate that to other patients, the public, as well as other healthcare professionals.

Why do we need Patient Research Ambassadors?
We would like to involve both patients and NHS researchers to recognise the importance of research in delivering health care. As a Patient Research Ambassador you can help to ensure that people using local NHS care have the best opportunities and choices about taking part in research studies.

If your intrested visit their website for more information.

NHS England is seeking feedback about people's experiences of personal health budgets in England.

Running until 30 April 2018, a survey is open to all current or previous personal health budget and integrated personal budget holders.

The findings will be used to improve how personal health budgets are offered in England.

How to have your say: Visit: https://surveys.quality-health.co.uk/Questionnaire/Anonymous/PHIBUR18/

Kitty Kioskli, a PhD student at King’s College London is carrying out a survey focusing on diabetes patients suffering from Painful Diabetic Neuropathy (PDN).

She is looking to gather a more in-depth understanding of the experience of pain from the perspective of PDN patients.

If you would like to be involved please visit the following link: https://kings.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/diabeticneuropathy

and answer ten questionnaires, which overall will help the research team to collect demographic data, and assess pain intensity, certain attitudes toward pain, mood, and the impact of pain on participants’ daily physical, social and work activities.

Recruitment for this project is: from 6/2/2018 until 30/6/2018 and they are aiming recruit 200 participants.

• The inclusion criteria for the study is: 
• Confirmed diagnosis of diabetes.
• Presence of painful diabetic neuropathy, for the last three months or more.
• Aged at least 18 years.
• Willingness and ability to take part.

If you would like to know more please contact, email: aikaterini.kioskli@kcl.ac.uk

The East Berkshire Clinical Commissioning Groups are revising their end of life care strategy for people of all ages. They are working with key stakeholders, such as patients, carers and healthcare professionals to ensure they get the strategy right – for patients, families, commissioners and providers.

They would like to understand people's experiences of end of life care. If you are a carer, parent, relative, friend or healthcare professional for a person or child registered with a GP in East Berkshire who is receiving palliative or end of life care they would like to hear from you.

The survey is available here. Closes 28 March 2018.

NHS England is supporting local NHS GP practices to offer their patients alternative ways to have a consultation with a GP or other practice-based health professional online via the internet, rather than waiting for the next available appointment to attend in person – we are referring to this as ‘online consultations’.

Online consultations are a way for patients to contact their GP practice without having to wait on the phone or take time out to come into the practice. Using a smartphone, tablet or computer, you can contact your practice about a new problem or an ongoing issue. You can ask questions or tell your GP about your symptoms. The practice will ensure your contact is dealt with by the right person in the team, helping ensure you are served as quickly and appropriately as possible. Sometimes this will mean you will need a phone call with the GP or nurse, or an appointment at the practice, and this will be arranged as usual. 

It doesn’t matter if you have not used online consultations yourself – your views are still of interest to the NHS. This is not about hospital appointments.

The consultation is available here.