News and reports

The former A & E department at Walsall Manor Hospital has been relocated and renamed the Urgent and Emergency Care Centre, integrating both emergency care and the Urgent Treatment Centre in one place.

Last year Healthwatch Walsall was pleased to have been contacted by Walsall Manor Hospital Trust to invite two cohorts of service users from our sensory loss and disability groups to visit the new department during the latter stages of its construction. The purpose of this was for the Trust to hear firsthand the views of these groups with regards to the suitability of the facilities. Following on from this and six months after the opening of the new Urgent and Emergency Care Centre, Healthwatch Walsall wanted to hear from patients directly to find out about how the new facilities and services were working for them.

Read or download a copy.
One download is a PDF and the other in Microsft Word format.

Our complaints process outlines how to make a complaint about us and our approach to making sure complaints are resolved.

NHS 111 triages people's medical needs to enable them to access the appropriate services or to provide advice on self-care where relevant. We want to know if this process is working for you and understand your experiences of using the service.

Here is what you said.

A brief outline of some of the issues and themes that patients have faced when accessing Walsall Services during March 2024.

Also, things that you can get involved with!

Read or download a copy.
One download is a PDF and the other in Microsft Word format.

Teenage pregnancy was chosen as one of our priority projects for 2023-2024. We met with Local Authority staff and from this meeting it was clear most of the work we would be undertaking would be around communication, which is something we had already covered in our Young Persons Communication Around Health and Social Care Services Report. We then met with Walsall Teenage Pregnancy Lead; from this we were invited to engage with young people who are currently attending 2 programmes that are running in Walsall, Teens & Toddlers and Thrive.

On this occasion we carried out a project looking at the Accessible Information Standard to ensure it meets the needs of people with sensory impairment.

Guidance from NHS England states:
‘From 1 August 2016 onwards, all organisations that provide NHS care and/or publicly-funded adult social care are legally required to follow the Accessible Information Standard.’

‘The Standard sets out a specific, consistent approach to identifying, recording, flagging, sharing and meeting the information and communication support needs of patients, service users, carers and parents with a disability, impairment or sensory loss.’

This report is a local sample of service user experiences and views.

Available as a PDF and Word document which can be read aloud.

A brief outline of some of the issues and themes that patients have faced when accessing Walsall Services during January 2024.

Also, things that you can get involved with!

A brief outline of some of the issues and themes that patients have faced when accessing Walsall Services during February 2024.

Also, things that you can get involved with!

An estimated 1.9 million people living in private households in the UK (2.9% of the population) were experiencing self-reported Long Covid (symptoms continuing for more than four weeks after the first confirmed or suspected coronavirus (Covid-19) infection that were not explained by something else) as of 5 March 2023. Long Covid symptoms adversely affected the day-to-day activities of 1.5 million people (79% of those with self-reported Long Covid), with 381,000 (20%) reporting that their ability to undertake their day-to-day activities
had been “limited a lot”. Long Covid is an emerging phenomenon that is not yet fully understood.

Healthwatch Walsall wanted explore how Black and Asian women in Walsall truly feel during
their maternity journey. Do women feel as though they are listened to and valued as individuals? Do women feel they are treated with respect and compassion? These are major factors in the quality of treatment a patient feels they have received. Furthermore, we wanted to ask women if they felt their ethnic background influenced the treatment and care they received.

Gathering such patient experiences helps to give a small insight into the maternity journey for Black and Asian women in Walsall.