Year: 2017

We want to say big thank you to the volunteers, local community and organisations who’ve supported us over the last twelve months. We look forward to continuing to build our relationships with you in 2018.

Our office closes at midday on Wednesday 20 December for the Christmas and New Year holidays and re-opens on Tuesday 2 January 2018.

If you need to talk to someone on Christmas day there are free phone lines that you can call. For example:

Over the past few months our volunteers have visited all the major community centres in Camden to test how accessible they are for disabled people. They used their own lived experiences and a set of questions developed as a group to look at a wide range of disability issues.

We mentioned in our previous newsletter that we’re working on this with project with Camden Disability Action.

Anna Wright our Deputy Director and Policy Lead spoke to Camden Community Radio about our pilot project to assess the quality of Camden’s seven residential care homes. The project has prompted a nationwide conversation with MPs and is now being replicated across England.

Listen to the interview here

See the press release below:

6 November 2017

We’re working on a social media campaign with young people from William Ellis School and LaSWAP sixth form consortium to find out which health and social care issues are important to them and also how they want to be communicated to especially on social media.

As part of the campaign the young people will direct and produce a video expressing their views.  

It’s important that the organisations who make decisions about local health and social care services, listen to young people’s needs when they are planning services for young people.

Healthwatch Camden attends the regular meetings of the Adult Health and Social Care Scrutiny Committee. The role of this committee, which is comprised of elected members of Camden Council, is to scrutinise matters relating to health, public health and adult social care. They also listen to local residents with a view to improving health and social care services, reducing health inequalities and improving the health and care of local residents.

Recently, our Director Frances Hasler did an interview for Camden community radio (CCRadio). CCRadio produces weekly shows about life and events in Camden. They were interesting in finding out more about what our role is in the community.

Frances talked about our work with local people and organisations, she also spoke on our highlights of the year and how our work has influenced the delivery of health and social care services in Camden.

In December 2016, Camden Council’s Cabinet Members approved the development of a new strategy for working with older and disabled people.

The title of the strategy is “Supporting people, connecting communities: living and aging better in Camden”.

We’re seeing great results from our work in partnership with Independent Age on indicators of quality in care homes. Read our reports for more information.  

This winter, Healthwatch Camden is going out into the community to find out what is important to local people in terms of Camden’s health and social care service provision.

We’ll have stalls, for example in local libraries, supermarkets and college campuses. We want people to tell us the health and social care issues that they think should be prioritised especially over the winter months by service providers.  

Healthwatch Camden and Camden Disability Action are working together to find out how accessible Camden’s community centres are for local residents with disabilities.