People want more control and choice over health decisions

Blog - 1 August 2019

Nearly 700 people in Birmingham and Solihull told their local Healthwatch about the changes that they would like to see made to their local NHS after the Government's promise to invest billions into services. Read what people said.

My health is very important for me and I want to be listened to regarding my health and involved in care management.

How many people spoke up?

Nearly 700 people from Birmingham and Solihull shared their views with their local Healthwatch on how extra money could be used to improve their local health services.

The local Healthwatch worked hard to engage people from across the community, holding focus groups with particular groups, including people with sight or hearing loss or learning disability and carers.

What changes do people want to see?

People told Healthwatch how their ability to self-care would be improved by more control and choice over decisions and more health education.

In focus: Information you can trust

People who took part in the local focus groups said that they wanted the NHS to help people access easy-to-understand information they could trust, and which could help them care more for themselves.

Local people said that trustworthy information which can help them make decisions could be hard to find and access. Hurdles that people shared included:

Older people not being able to access the internet easily or not knowing how to use some apps and phones
Feeling overloaded by the amount of information available if you do have internet access
Not knowing if the information you then find is correct
Not knowing how to act on the information you have been given – for example using food labels to guide food choices.

People said that the NHS could help by directing people to more trustworthy information or by making more support available through services like NHS 111 and pharmacists.

(function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(d.getElementById(id))return;js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src='https://embed.playbuzz.com/sdk.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}(document,'script','playbuzz-sdk'));

Response from the Birmingham and Solihull Sustainability and Transformation Partnership (STP):

The STP’s ambition to help people to help themselves to live long, happy and independent lives, requires us to understand and act on what really matters to them. This report will help us to do just that.