NHS Quality Checkers - making services more accessible for people with learning disabilities and autistic people
People with learning disabilities often find it difficult to access NHS services, due to the complicated forms, words or confusing layouts in buildings. We also know that people with a learning disability on average die much younger than other people because they are not using important health services, such as getting annual health checks or cancer screening. Your Voice Counts wants this to change so people with learning disabilities and autistic people live longer and healthier lives. We have a great team of Quality Checkers helping us do this across South Tyneside and Gateshead.
Quality checking is where people with a learning disability and/or autistic people are employed to assess the quality of commonly used NHS services, including GPs. Quality Checkers look at how well services involve and treat people with a learning disability and/or autistic people and help the services plan to improve anything they might need to change.
The Quality Checker Team
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Melissa, Ryan and Paula - NHS Quality Checkers and Joanne and Amy - Involvement Workers.
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Quality Check Contract in South Tyneside (2020-2025)
We have a five-year contract with South Tyneside Clinical Commissioning group (CCG) to carry out annual quality checks in all 21 GP surgeries until April 2025. This is amazing and shows how committed South Tyneside CCG are to improve the lives of people with learning disabilities and/or autistic people. As the project continues these checks may extend into other health settings such as hospitals and dentists depending on need.
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“Working with the Your Voice Counts Quality Checkers has been an excellent, worthwhile experience. It is important to us that our patients feel supported and comfortable when discussing their health care needs and the Quality Check process helps us to identify areas where we can make improvements and where we do things well. I’d recommend being part of this process to all practices.”
Imeary St Practice Manager, Suzanne Robertson
Quality checks in Gateshead
Using some remaining monies from our Newcastle and Gateshead CCG funding we are planning to conduct a quality check within the Endoscopy department of the local Queen Elizabeth hospital in Gateshead. We will also carry out Quality Checks in two GP surgeries in the Outer West Primary Care Network area – watch this space for progress!
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Other work
We also carry out NHS Quality Checks in the workplace. A previous example included one in 2020 with NTW Solutions – Supporting Better Care health care: a subsidiary within Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust. A comprehensive report was created and shared with key people in the trust including Caroline Wills (Associate Director Learning Disability and Autism) who acknowledged it as a really useful piece of work that would help the trust continue to improve.
If you would like more information about our Quality Check project, then please contact amy.broughton@yvc.org.uk or call us on 0191 4786472 for more details.
