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Healthwatch, working together across West Yorkshire, has highlighted a range of challenges and issues being faced by members of our communities to those responsible for planning health and care services.

Carers Lanyard: Healthwatch Kirklees launch a project to distribute carer lanyards to health and social settings throughout Kirklees.

In 2017, Healthwatch Kirklees completed engagement with residents, carers and staff in care homes relating to a proposal to allocate one GP practice to each individual care home, rather than having multiple GP practices serving each home. In September 2020, Greater Huddersfield Clinical Commissioning Group (GHCCG) & North Kirklees Clinical Commissioning Group (NKCCG) began to allocate one or more GP practices to work with each nursing or residential home in Kirklees based on national guidance provided by NHS England. This gave Healthwatch Kirklees the opportunity to see how our previous findings and recommendations had shaped this new way of working.

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.

We are aware that Dr Ahmad will not be renewing his GP contact with Greater Huddersfield Clinical Commissioning Group. His GP contact ends 30th June 2018.

In 2017 Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) in Kirklees stopped automatic repeat prescriptions in an attempt to cut down on medicines waste.

When we go out into the Kirklees community we have heard a couple of stories that we wanted to share.

When Healthwatch Kirklees heard that North Kirklees Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) had some ideas which might improve health services for care home residents, we very much wanted to be part of the engagement process, to ensure that as many people as possible could hear about the ideas and have their say on things which may affect them in future.

Sexual health services in Kirklees are provided by Locala.  The Commissioner (Public Health) has asked Healthwatch Kirklees to find out what people think about these services:  What works well? What could be improved? What’s important to people? Are there any barriers for people who want to access these services?