Healthwatch Barking and Dagenham ‘Who Knows?’ survey results

We, at Healthwatch Barking and Dagenham, believe it is only by listening to and understanding the people who use the services that we can drive change and use the feedback to hold these services accountable. But how can we know the effectiveness?

Each year we hold a survey to ensure constant improvement and to provide a good service delivery, aiming to find out:

• If people know who Healthwatch is and about our signposting service.
• If they have used our services before and what the outcome was
• How we can improve
• Areas of concern in health and social care which we should investigate.

This year, our main findings include:

• 75% of respondents had not heard of Healthwatch prior to taking the survey
• Of those that had heard of Healthwatch, 43% of respondents heard about us through a public event or information stand
• Those who had been involved with us greatly benefitted from our service
• 40% of respondents do not use social media, 31% of respondents use Instagram, compared to 23% for Facebook and 6% for Twitter.
• Respondents felt that we should focus on the following three areas of health and social care in the next year:
  • Mental health support
  • Access to healthcare services, including GPs and specialist care like diabetes and cancer services
  • Community support and resources, such as childcare services, speech therapy, and healthy living activities

You can read the full report here.

Look out for our 2024 survey, launching soon!