Your Voice in Health and Social Care (YVHSC) has been commissioned by London Borough of Hillingdon to provide Healthwatch Hillingdon from 1st August 2025. YVHSC is an experienced provider of Healthwatch, Carer, Special Educational Needs and Disability, Mental Health and engagement services in London. YVHSC will be working with the previous Healthwatch Hillingdon staff and committee to ensure a smooth transfer from the service that they provided, enabling local people to continue to access Healthwatch services as normal.
As major changes are expected in how community engagement is delivered, following the Government’s plans to close Healthwatch England by 2027, Your Voice in Health and Social Care (YVHSC) wants to ensure that local people’s voices remain central to decisions about health and social care.
We want to hear from residents who use services like GPs, hospitals, dentists, pharmacies, care homes, or other support services. Your experiences will help us continue working with the NHS, social care, and other key decision-makers to improve the quality and accessibility of care.
To strengthen this engagement during a time of change, YVHSC will be:
– Increasing face-to-face community engagement with more dedicated officers on the ground
– Expanding our Enter and View programme to visit services more regularly
– Gathering real-time patient and service user feedback from daily visits to health and care settings
– Conducting in-depth research projects on key health and social care issues
– Co-producing and co-designing better ways of working with local communities, especially those whose voices are often left out
Healthwatch Hillingdon- Message for existing volunteers
From Friday 1 August 2025, YVHSC will take over the engagement and shaping services for Healthwatch Hillingdon to improve the services to the community. YVHSC recognise the importance of the role of volunteers and the contribution volunteers have made in the past to the success of Healthwatch. YVHSC aim to provide:
An excellent training hub that focusses on employability,
Every volunteer with the skills and knowledge to develop themselves.
There will be some changes to the Volunteer programme. Changes include:
– YVHSC Central Volunteer Team will support and assist volunteers and organisations dealing with volunteers. The Central Volunteer Team can be contacted via the following:
– Gloria Koduah: Head of volunteering,
– Better Impact Management system: YVHSC will use a better volunteer management system (Better Impact). This online system will allow improved management of volunteer data.
If volunteers wish to start with Healthwatch Hillingdon as volunteers, find out more
