Healthwatch West Sussex recognises the crucial role that the community and voluntary sector has in peoples’ health, care, and wellbeing.

Our Community Partnership work has been dedicated, focused, cohesive and continues to grow, dovetailing alongside the core role of Healthwatch to help develop relationships that give strength to our communities.

We live in a large and complex county with a diverse population with different needs. When we set up our Partnership Project there were limited pockets of partnership working which made it difficult for the voluntary sector to be heard. This is now noticeably improved with health and social care working much more closely together. We also observed that the NHS didn’t always understand the work of the voluntary sector and struggled to see how it could add value to their work. In both of these areas, we feel Healthwatch was able to use its unique position across the health and care system to strengthen relationships.

A large number of small voluntary organisations are not formally connected to the health and social care system, or only link to specific parts, so their voices and experiences aren’t always heard.

People don’t like telling their stories multiple times – they have trusting relationships with community and voluntary organisations they deal with regularly and don’t want to or feel
uncomfortable repeating themselves and having to explain their background again and again.

It’s not just about not being heard, it’s the synergy of sharing resources and expertise, avoiding duplication so all organisations can be as efficient with their resources as possible – over the last decade they have all become very lean and focused on their core purpose so don’t always have the time or skills for networking and influencing strategically.

The benefit for Healthwatch West Sussex of developing partnerships is Common Purpose – the shared vision on what is needed and how to achieve this. Examples include joint engagement, joint reports, shared endorsements, and greater reach for publications on webpages and databases, joint social media, joint delivery of projects and events.

Partnership working does not necessarily mean finance but does need to have a degree of control and influence for mutual benefit. Not only do we deliver agreed projects, but we ensure that communicating the impact and outcomes of the work back to partners and stakeholders takes place to share best practice across our West Sussex communities and nationally where appropriate.

Our Equalities and Inclusion Approach for this year, sets out how we plan to work with and in our communities.

We believe that comparing lots of different experiences help us to identify patterns and learning what is and isn’t working. We go to where people are, without an agenda to really listen and understand the unique challenges our communities face. We act on feedback and drive change. Listening to people which has positively affected outcomes and influenced important decisions about people’s care and health.

 

About the author

Cheryl Berry

Community Partnership Lead, Healthwatch West Sussex

I was a volunteer for Healthwatch West Sussex (2013) and joined the staff team in 2017 as the Community Partnership Lead. A unique role to develop strategic collaborations and partnerships with numerous Voluntary and Community Sector Organisations, to amplify their members voices and strengthen our insight and evidence to help improve health and social care provision. As services will be delivered differently in the future and need to be affordable. This begins when organisations work in partnership together, as they can be more innovative.

cheryl.berry@healthwatchwestsussex.co.uk