Thank you to everyone who came to our Annual Meeting
We brought together over 60 members, volunteers, staff, local colleagues, community partners, and members of the public to showcase our work and plan our priorities for the coming year.
We were also delighted to be joined once again by Anna Geyer from NewPossibilities, who created a visual record of the meeting and what we talked about. You can view this amazing illustration above.
Our Annual Meeting is an opportunity for us to celebrate our work and impact, share what we’ve been up to, and highlight what people have been telling us. At this year’s meeting, we heard from staff members Shukri Xalane and Odeta Pakalnyte, who spoke about our digital health engagement project and our work ensuring that primary care services work for people from across our communities.
We were also pleased to highlight the amazing work of our volunteers and community partners. Our Youth Project Officer Alex Weston was joined by two of our Young Healthwatch volunteers, Civan and Aaniya, to talk about our exciting collaborative work with the National Institute for Health Research on a new student engagement project.
This year saw the return of our Small Grants Programme, where we work closely with grassroots community organisations in Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea to tackle local health inequalities. We were delighted to be joined by Ciaran Raffety from Sport4Health, who talked about our work together engaging with the local Filipino community about how health and care services work for them.
Setting our priorities
Alongside showcasing our work and celebrating its impact, our meeting is a perfect opportunity to speak to people from across our communities. We asked attendees to tell us what is important to them, to help us set our priorities for the year ahead.
Among the issues people talked to us about were mental health services for young people, Patient Participation Groups (PPGs) and how to make them more representative, advocacy work, palliative care, antenatal care, and access to primary care. These conversations were rich and informative, and so important for us as we plan our upcoming work.
Thank you
After a challenging year for everyone, it was lovely to see so many people at our meeting. Thank you to everyone who attended for sharing their experiences and helping us set our priorities for 2022.
Olivia Clymer, our CEO said:
“After such a challenging year for everyone it was great to see so many friendly faces at our Annual Meeting. It always reminds me what a privilege it is to be part of Healthwatch."
"I’d like to say thank you for sharing your experiences with us, they are our work and we treat them with care. We learned so much from our conversations, and will be using them to shape our priorities for the next year.
I hope you have a safe and festive holiday period!”
