Calderdale and Kirklees Joint Health Scrutiny

Healthwatch Kirklees were at the joint scrutiny meeting this morning at Huddersfield Town Hall.

A Joint Health Scrutiny Committee has been formed to respond to proposals to change Huddersfield and Calderdale Hospital services.  The Committee membership comprises of 4 Councillors from Calderdale Council and 4 Councillors from Kirklees Council and is an independent committee which will review all aspects of the proposal.

You can read the papers from this meeting here 

Rory Deighton Healthwatch Director made the following points:

• any engagement and consultation questions need to be tested and piloted with patients to make sure the questions are fair and open ended
• all engagement materials need to be tested with patients before being finalised for the formal consultation period
• patients require good clear information on the proposals so that they can comment in an informed way
• Healthwatch Kirklees will work during the consultation process and independently listen to what people are saying and we will feed this information back into the Joint Scrutiny Committee
• we requested that the telephone part of the consultation plan was reviewed. We did not feel that this is a good way to ask people questions or opinions on this sensitive subject