Health Watch Bolton

General information

About Healthwatch Bolton

Healthwatch will give people a powerful voice locally and nationally. At a local level, Healthwatch Bolton will work to help local people get the best out of their health and social care services. Whether it's improving them today or helping to shape them for tomorrow. Local Healthwatch is all about local voices being able to influence the delivery and design of local services. Not just the people who use them right now, but anyone who might need to use services in future.

What is Healthwatch?

Healthwatch is the new independent consumer champion created to gather and represent the views of the public in health and social care planning.
Healthwatch will play a role at both national and local level and will make sure that the views of both the general public and the people who currently use services are taken into account.
We are here to give your voice strength, help us to help you. Sign up for our newsletters and to receive information about our events and those of other community groups that we work with.
What we do

Local Healthwatch will take on the work of the Local Involvement Networks (LINks) and will also: - represent the views of people who use services, carers and the public on the Health and Wellbeing boards, set up by local authorities - provide an information and sign-posting service for people to help them to learn more about their rights in relation to health and social care and report concerns about the quality of health care to Healthwatch England, the national body which can then recommend that the Care Quality Commission take action.
How we work

Every voice counts when it comes to shaping the future of health and social care, and when it comes to improving it for today. Everything that local Healthwatch does will bring the voice and influence of local people to the development and delivery of local services.
People need to feel that their local Healthwatch belongs to and reflects them and their local community. It needs to feel approachable, practical and dynamic and to act on behalf of local people.
We're helping you to shape and improve the services you use.
We're engaging with people in your community & if you haven't met us yet, please get in touch!
We're an open organisation and want to make it easy for you to talk to us
We're inclusive & we want people from every part of your community to join us
Ask us what we're doing & we'll always tell you what's happening.
You can hold us to account
We're here to help services to improve.
We'll notice the bad things they do, and the good
We use your evidence to build a true picture of your local services

How we are set up

Healthwatch Bolton has a Board which has 8 volunteer members. The Board was recruited by the Local Authority and the local Clinical Commissioning Group. A Chair person was elected at the first Board meeting. You can Meet the Board here

Healthwatch Bolton will be a legal entity in it's own right and the Board are currently working with the Parent organisation to establish this.

BHA have a three year contract to support the Board to develop their ability to manage the legal entity that Healthwatch Bolton will become and will support Board members to take on increasing levels of responsibility over the period of the contract. The aim is for the Healthwatch Bolton Board to be completely self-managing at the end of the third year.