"A Healthier Warrington"

Thank you for logging onto A Healthier Warrington website.  Over the summer of 2008 NHS Warrington (Warrington PCT) worked closely with the public and key stakeholders within Warrington to understand what they thought of local health services, what people thought were the biggest health issues and what people thought the future looked like.

To really understand and have a meaningful debate we sent a Health Survey to the majority of homes in the town asking people to complete and send it back, we received approximately 10,000 completed surveys and the information we were given was invaluable in terms of understanding and planning our future.

We also held a series of deliberative events with the public and stakeholders to talk face to face about the health of the town, how best to meet future health needs and how to ensure we continued to improve our health service locally for when people are ill and need treatment and care.  Approximately 100 residents from Warrington took part in the series of events but we wanted to give this opportunity to talk to us to a much wider selection of people.  So we held an on line deliberative forum which followed the same process applied to the face to face events.  The results of these sessions are available in the outcome report attached. 

We also wanted to engage with some of our 'seldom heard' communities and undertook to hold a series of discussion groups.  We talked to a range of people including older people, young people, a range of carers, people from disadvantaged backgrounds, disabled people, people from black and ethnic backgrounds and a group of men in a local prison.  We asked thee people about their experience of health services, what they thought we could do better and ideas about how they could improve their own health.

Stakeholder Engagement  

We also worked with out key stakeholders (e.g. voluntary sector; GPs, North Cheshire Hospitals NHS Trust,  Warrington Borough Councillors, Community Services) to develop a strategic plan which would work for Warrington residents and make us a healthier town.

The results of this engagement process are attached and have been instrumental in forming the strategic commissioning plan.  This strategy has been developed with local people and we would like to say thank you to everybody for their input and enthusiasm for getting involved.

So what next?   

A Public Consultation - 24th November 2008 to 16th February 2009 - A Healthier Warrington Phase II

All this work led to the development of a Strategic Commissioning Plan.  We plan to consult formally with the public between the 24 November 2008 and the 16th February 2009, and we want as many people as possible to take part in the next stage of this debate.

Public meetings are to be held on the following dates:

12 January 2009 - 6pm-8pm - Whittle Hall Community Centre, Lonsdale Close, Warrington WA5 3UA       

19 January 2009 - 2pm-4pm - Grappenhall Community Centre, Bellhouse Lane, Grappenhall, Warrington, WA4 2SG

23 January 2009 - 2pm-4pm - The Gateway, 89 Sankey Street, Warrington, WA1 1SR

28 January 2009 - 6pm-8pm - Birchwood High School, Brock Road, Birchwood, Warrington WA3 7PT

3 February 2009 - 6pm-8pm - St Anns Church Hall, Central Avenue, Orford, Warrington, WA2 8AJ