Meet our amazing Healthwatch Heroes

Haren Thillainathan - Healthwatch Volunteer 
He has guided our work Committee Member made sure local people's needs are considered as Healthwatch Representative.

Haren joined HWW in September 2021 when he was elected to the Committee. As a committee member he has input into HWW’s corporate governance and strategic objectives. He's since gone on to other volunteer activity, including outreach and organising events with the blind and partially sighted (BPS) in the borough.

He was also the HWW representative on the Wandsworth & Richmond Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment which determines whether pharmaceutical services are meeting the needs across Wandsworth.

Haren said 'Volunteering with HWW has been a rewarding experience and a great opportunity for me to give something back to Wandsworth’s communities. It has complemented other engagement activity I have been increasingly involved in the borough this year. My career in the energy sector has been primarily focussed on national policy and strategy so it has been personally satisfying to engage at a local community level and interact with local government and health authorities.'

Martin Haddon - Healthwatch Volunteer 
He has helped improve mental health services.

Martin has been volunteering with Healthwatch Wandsworth since its inception, and has become an expert on local mental health services. He works very hard to find out what kind of services our Mental Health Trust should be providing to make sure that people are receiving the best treatment possible.

He's very knowledgeable about current services and future developments, and can scrutinise and explain what's happening within local services - to us, and to local service users. Martin has also been part of our Enter and View team and his knowledge and skills have ensured that visits and reports are of a high standard.

Much of his work has been behind the scenes. There are many things we wouldn't have been able to achieve without Martin, so we wanted to celebrate how much we value the time, commitment and expertise he has given.

Fatima - Healthwatch Volunteer 
She has been supporting us to hear more from people in the community.

Fatima attended a workshop online about carers' experiences of accessing health and social care services during the pandemic. She wrote a report of the workshop for the HWW newsletter. Her listening skills came in handy for this task, although said she found the report writing slightly daunting to begin with, HW England have since released some online training courses that she hope to complete when time permits.

Another task involved updating a list of the different support services available in the community for people suffering from dementia and their carers, as part of the Dementia Awareness Week. She also attended an informative session on 'Health Inequalities' online, a subject she says she is 'passionate about and would like to be more involved with in the future. Knowing the problem exists and issues around it are being acknowledged and addressed is encouraging.'

'Volunteering with Healthwatch Wandsworth (HWW) has so far been an enjoyable and worthwhile experience for me. I have gained useful insight into the work Healthwatch is doing to help improve health and care for everyone. I have also had an opportunity to identify my strengths and reflect on the type of voluntary work I would like to be involved with at HWW in the coming years. I am hoping to help make a difference and give something back to the community, e.g. through participating in outreach events.'

Sara Turner - Healthwatch Volunteer 
She has helped improve services for older people in hospitals and the community.

Sara was a clinical psychologist in the NHS where she was interested in promoting service improvements, especially for groups of patients whose voices were often not heard. She is interested in the Enter and View (E&V), team’s work, speaking directly to patients and carers to see services from their viewpoint and has been a member of the team for more than seven years. She's taken part in many visits including to services for older people both in hospitals (St George’s Hospital and Springfield) and in the community (care homes, extra-care settings and services for people with learning disabilities) as well as Wandsworth Prison.

Sara tells us she always enjoys the E&V visits, especially talking to service users and carers. ‘I have found it very positive being part of a team which works well together and is committed to high standards for visits and reports.’

Sara has been impressed by the positive responses of service providers and commissioners to E&V reports and the way that some have risen to the challenges of improving their services.

Sara has also joined the Healthwatch Committee to be more involved in guiding the work that we do.

‘The support from the Healthwatch manager has been excellent and very important for getting the project done.’ For those thinking of becoming a volunteer, she says it is a ‘rewarding experience’.

Healthwatch respects its volunteers and ‘does not ask more of them than they can give.’ There are lots of different roles, from being part of the E&V team, which works quite intensively on a project, to doing background research and being part of the outreach work.

Cherill Scott - Healthwatch Volunteer 
She has helped Healthwatch Wandsworth deliver a better service.

Cherill has been involved in Healthwatch Wandsworth since it began. She has contributed in a variety of volunteer roles, from Enter and View to the Healthwatch Executive. Cherill's committment and background working and researching in the NHS has helped us a lot over the years. Thank you Cherill.

Cherill told us “I believe that HWW’s role in engaging with the community over the NHS is particularly important, as the service needs to become less remote and more sensitive to local health needs.”