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This work explores whether we can use social media to start a set of different conversations with our communities.

It explores how we might use social media to start new conversations about the NHS in West Yorkshire and Harrogate, about wellbeing in all of our communities, and about what really makes us healthy.

The waiting game

Since March 2020 we have had a lot of feedback from the public telling us about delays, difficulties and changes in NHS and social care services, due to the Covid-19 pandemic affecting how these services were run. Healthwatch Kirklees and Healthwatch Calderdale worked collaboratively during 2021 to collect the experiences of people living in Calderdale and Kirklees during the Covid-19 pandemic who had experienced delays to health and social care for non-Covid related conditions since March 2020.

NHS Report Delivery Plan For Tackling The Covid-19 Backlog

Kirklees has a higher than national average number of ethnic minorities. These communities generally have lower interactions with services and for South Asian people with learning disabilities, this is further exacerbated since people with learning disabilities and their carers can be isolated socially and when it comes to accessing NHS or social care services.

5 years ago, one of the main issues people spoke to us about was difficulty getting an appointment with their GP and we still regularly hear that people are experiencing problems when trying to access primary care services. When we heard about the new ‘extended access’ schemes across Kirklees, we were interested to know what people thought about the opportunity to see a GP (and other primary care practitioners) in the evenings and weekends.