Reports Hub

The latest Healthwatch East Sussex Annual Report summarises our activity and achievements in 2020-21 during a highly eventful year.

Over the last 12 months we have engaged with more East Sussex residents than ever before, capturing and relaying experiences and preferences on health and care services to commissioners and providers, helping them to understand the impacts of the pandemic and provide the support people require.

We raised awareness of challenges people face in accessing primary care, especially dentistry. We also captured the impact of visiting restrictions on those with family and friends in care homes. We collaborated with partners on the design of services to support homeless people and to the COVID-19 Outbreak Control Plan for East Sussex.

A series of webinar events were organised between September 2020 and March 2021 on behalf of informal carers (families and friends) of care home residents. Their purpose was to:

• Share unpaid carers’ views and experiences of visiting (or not visiting) their relative or friend in a care home during the pandemic.
• Enable unpaid carers to ask questions and gain answers from health and social care representatives about current and future access to care home residents.
• Have access to timely, accurate information around official and local visiting guidelines.
• Raise any concerns about wider care home service improvement; and

Influence decisions made by health and care leaders during the pandemic