East Sussex Community Voice the patient champion for East Sussex

East Sussex Community Voice (ESCV) is delighted to have been awarded the Healthwatch East Sussex (HWES) contract to deliver the health and care watchdog role for up to five years from April 2022.

Our services will enable the public to have a real say in the design and delivery of health and care services. This will happen through a diverse range of engagement activity with people from many different communities from across the county.

Our established survey work, enter and view, Feedback Centre reviews, Information & Signposting Service and Listening Tours at Healthwatch will continue. We will be recruiting more volunteers from the ages of 14 upwards to help deliver this busy programme.

New Developments

We also have some exciting new projects starting up in 2022 including:

• A new Prioritisation and Decision-Making process to increase public and partner involvement in how Healthwatch makes decisions about our priorities over the next few years. Our aim is to make Healthwatch East Sussex more effective, inclusive and transparent in priority setting and decision-making.
• A new Equalities and Inclusion Group will recruit a panel of diverse volunteers from seldom heard communities to advise us on how we make our work program, communications and staff/volunteer recruitment more open, accessible and representative.
• A Small Grants Programme will support community partners to help design and deliver projects we would like to run, with a focus on equalities. The pot size will depend upon ESCV reserves but is anticipated to be £20,000 to £30,000 in the first year (2022/23).

The Executive Director of East Sussex Community Voice, John Routledge said:

“I am delighted that ESCV has been chosen to deliver the Healthwatch contract from April 2022. Our dedicated staff, volunteers and board members have worked hard to make a real success of Healthwatch over recent years and we are grateful to our commissioners, East Sussex County Council, for recognising this with the award of a new contract.”

Cllr. Carl Maynard, Lead Member for Adult Social Care and Health at East Sussex County Council commented that:

“Following an open procurement process ESCC are awarding the Healthwatch East Sussex and Independent Health Complaints Advocacy Service contract to East Sussex Community Voice (ESCV). ESCC is confident that ESCV will continue to develop and strengthen their engagement with people across the county and collaboration with local health and care services.”

ESCV worked in partnership with The Advocacy People for the Healthwatch bid and will again commission them to deliver the Independent Health Complaints and Advocacy Service (IHCAS) as part of this contract. Matthew Hilton, their Chief Executive highlighted that:

“The Advocacy People are delighted to be continuing our partnership with ESCV here in our home county of East Sussex. Independent Health Complaints Advocacy provides a key part of ensuring that the voices of those who use these services are heard and feeds through to improving the overall experience for everyone. We look forward to building on the positive work we have already done on this in East Sussex.”

For media enquiries about Healthwatch East Sussex, please contact John Routledge, Director, on 07794 100 291 | 01323 403590 john.routledge@escv.org.uk