Healthwatch: major new report.
Society is getting used to the idea that we or our loved ones are more likely to spend time in a care home.
So an authoritative report asking “What’s it like to live in a care home?” is an important event.
Between Jan 2016 and April 2017, local Healthwatch staff and volunteers across England visited 197 care homes in 63 local authorities to find out what day-to-day life is really like for residents. Read the response of Healthwatch Surrey who contributed to the national picture.
Healthwatch isn’t a regulator that assesses quality of care against the standards society demands. Rather it concentrates on “the experiences of people using the services” and reports their assessments as citizens and consumers. You would expect the two kinds of reports to match each other and generally they do.
But the special, personal, judgements of individuals and families, collected and published by Healthwatch, are now an essential complement to the work of the Care Quality Commission highlighting areas where improvements are needed.