Meet the game-changing teams shortlisted for helping to make care better

Meet the shortlist for the Healthwatch Impact Award. 

The annual Healthwatch Impact Award aims to celebrate the difference our 4,500 staff and volunteers have made to health and care services using the feedback that people share with us. 

This year 18 outstanding projects have been shortlisted from across England. 

The winners of the 2023 Healthwatch Impact Award will be announced in March.

The shortlist includes:

1. Healthwatch Blackpool for helping to identify and tackle a rise in children and young people vaping.
2. Healthwatch Birmingham for their work to (a) improve maternity care for people from Black African and Black Caribbean backgrounds and (b) making sure that people from ethnic minority communities have a greater role in designing health and care services that meet their unique needs.
3. Healthwatch Cambridgeshire and Peterborough for delivering a Gypsy, Roma, Traveller cultural awareness programme for 400+ Integrated Care System colleagues, and an extensive community engagement plan, to tackle the health inequalities experienced by these communities.
4. Healthwatch Coventry for improving the maternity care of refugee and newly arrived women.
5. Healthwatch Croydon for helping Black African and Black Caribbean communities co-design new mental health and wellbeing services in line with their specific views and experiences. 
6. Healthwatch Essex for developing a new tool to help trauma survivors when traumatic memories are triggered.
7. Healthwatch Gloucestershire for getting the NHS to improve the mental health support available in emergency departments.  
8. Healthwatch Herefordshire for improving people’s access to digital healthcare and support. 
9. Healthwatch Hertfordshire for identifying the impact of the cost of living on people's health and getting more support provided.
10. Healthwatch Kent for improving access to health and care information for people with sensory impairments and learning disabilities.
11. Healthwatch Kirklees for launching the ‘carers lanyard’, ensuring that carers are immediately identifiable in health and care settings.
12. Healthwatch Leeds for working with local partners on the rollout of an improved citywide model of home care.  
13. Healthwatch Milton Keynes for ensuring that more deaf patients in Milton Keynes get their legal right to accessible health and social care information and communications support if they need it. 
14. Healthwatch North Somerset for improving access to online health services for digitally excluded people.
15. Healthwatch Suffolk for using the experiences of over 50,000 children and young people to shape mental health support in schools, colleges and the NHS. 
16. Healthwatch Surrey for making it easier for people with learning disabilities to access cancer screening services.
17. Healthwatch Torbay for helping to improve care and support for local patients in their own home.

Commenting on the news, Louise Ansari, Chief Executive of Healthwatch England, said: 

“Over a million people a year either seek advice from Healthwatch or share their care experience. And, every year, there are thousands of examples of where this feedback has been used by services to make positive changes to health and care. 

“So, getting shortlisted for our national impact award is no mean feat and everyone at these local Healthwatch should be really proud.”