Findings from the Healthwatch Wandsworth Assembly 13th October 2022
What we did
At our 2022 Healthwatch Assembly on 13th October 2021 we heard from a range of speakers about health inequalities in Wandsworth and discussed how best to tackle them.
You can find out more about what our speaker told us on our webpage here.
During the day we all discussed how these projects work with their communities to help people improve their health and support people to get something they need and strengthen skills they already have.
What we were told
In the discussion part of the day, we spoke about things to consider when working with communities. Drawing from the discussions we had as well as from the speakers that we heard from we drew out some key messages about working with communities and tackling health inequalities.
Some of the important ideas and concepts that came up around working with communities included:
- The importance of building and fostering trust between organisations and the community and key people in the community. This includes visibility and transparency – not just the presentation of statistics. This takes time. It is important to have time for meaningful conversations and for people to have time to be involved
- Good communication is key, especially for real listening and creating networks
- Make the most of different cultural approaches (and plan cultural sensitivity into projects)
- Don’t just involve people but empower them, consider peoples’ priorities and provide them with information
- Ensure accessibility e.g., language and format
- Consider what you can offer to someone who wants to be involved (e.g., Incentives for volunteers and flexible involvement)
