Healthwatch Ealing Engagement Report Q4 2020 to Q1 2021

This engagement report details online events/meetings we have attended, issues raised at these meetings, our successes, challenges and lastly our upcoming projects. With restrictions slowly being lifted, our aim is to resume face-to-face engagement work to interact with as many patients and service users as we possibly can.

Healthwatch Ealing has been working remotely but will soon resume face-to-face public engagement in line with government guidelines. We are still experiencing challenges with outreach and engagement work as it has been difficult to reach members of the public who are digitally excluded.

Meetings organised by Healthwatch Ealing during this time focused on overcoming challenges that we faced in conducting our research and day to day engagement work. Through establishing and building relationships with voluntary and statutory organisations in order to utilise our network we were able to successfully address these outreach issues as best as we could during this time.

Healthwatch Ealing engaged with a number of organisations from October to December 2020. These included meetings with Acton Town COVID Task Group, Working with Young People, Boots Pharmacy Covid Vaccinatino Site Meeting Ealing and Hounslow CVs, amongst other services, a full list of the engagement activities can be found on pages 2 to 6 of the report.

Key health partners and borough stakeholders were brought together during this time via different forms of emeetings including Task Groups, such as the Acton Town COVID-19 Task Group; Discussion Forums, such as the Improving Vaccine Equity Forum; and Webinars for the distribution of information to the public such as the Healthwatch Tri-borough Webinars. 

The findings are discussed in more detail in the main body of the report, which is complete with recommendations, follow-up, activities and next steps.