About us

Healthwatch Blackpool is your local health and social care champion.

If you use GPs and hospitals, dentists, pharmacies, care homes or other support services, we want to hear about your experiences.

Healthwatch Blackpool is part of a network of over 150 local Healthwatch across the country. We’re here to hear your experiences of using local health and social care services. We are independent and recognise that it is often those closest to the process who are best placed to give useful feedback on the way services work and how they can be improved.

We provide the people of Blackpool with opportunities to share their views, we also provide an information and signposting service with the ultimate aim to promote health and care that works for you!

What can Healthwatch do?

Healthwatch Blackpool has a responsibility to share the views of the local community.  The NHS and Local Authority has a legal responsibility to listen and respond to those views.

This is part of the Health and Social Care Act 2012  and is important as it means we have the ability to influence local decision making around health and social care.

We can ask service providers for information which they must make available to us within 20 days.

We can carry out an Enter and View visit to any place where an NHS or Local Authority Adult Social Care service is provided.  Our focus is on people’s experiences which we share widely with decision makers and the Care Quality Commission.

We can refer a matter to the  Local Authority Overview and scrutiny committee These committees must then consider any relevant information we have sent them.

The law allows Healthwatch to have a voting representative on our local Health and Wellbeing Board