Healthwatch Oxfordshire

The Council is commissioning a Healthwatch Service for Oxfordshire, as required under the Social Care Act 2021.

Oxfordshire County Council has a legal requirement to commission Healthwatch services as per the Social Care Act 2012. The service must carry out particular activities as set out below:

1. Promote and support the involvement of local people in the commissioning, the provision and scrutiny of local care services.

2. Enable local people to monitor the standard of provision of local care services and whether and how local care services could and ought to be improved;

3. Obtain the views of local people regarding their needs for, and experiences of, local care services and importantly to make these views known;

4. Make reports and recommendations about how local care services could or ought to be improved. These should be directed to commissioners and providers of care services, and people responsible for managing or scrutinising local care services and shared with Healthwatch England.

5. Provide advice and information about access to local care services so choices can be made about local care services;

6. Formulate views on the standard of provision and whether and how the local care services could and ought to be improved; and share these views with Healthwatch England.

7. Make recommendations to Healthwatch England to advise the Care Quality Commission to conduct special reviews or investigations (or, where the circumstances justify doing so, making such recommendations direct to the CQC); and to make recommendations to Healthwatch England to publish reports about particular issues.

8. Provide Healthwatch England with the intelligence and insight it needs to enable it to perform effectively.

These outcomes will be delivered by:

• Advocating for high-quality and timely inclusion of Oxfordshire residents and service users in local decision-making processes, including informal and formal processes;

• Conducting at least one major or two small projects into the quality of local health and/or care services annually; making recommendations for service improvements where necessary.

• Maintaining a regular outreach programme with members of the public, service-users and voluntary sector partners;

• Working in partnership with voluntary sector colleagues to engage with seldom heard groups;

• Routinely analysing ongoing feedback received from our outreach programme or through unsolicited feedback, reporting the findings to local providers and commissioners;

• Working with partners to ensure an effective information sharing and signposting function;

• Working closely with local CQC inspectors to provide evidence to their inspection programme;

• Actively reporting to or participating in local oversight committees, including but not limited to the Health & Wellbeing Board and Joint Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee.