Blogs

Our blogs highlight the voices of people working across the health and social care sector, talking about a range of timely issues.

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- 8 October 2021
Growing crises require creative disruption: How Social Prescribing Link Workers Can Help Reduce Health Inequalities
Christiana Melam
By its very nature, social prescribing is a mechanism meant to empower and enable. The main driver of the social prescribing link worker model is the acknowledgment that the health and wellbeing of individuals and communities are often dictated by a range of environmental and socio-economic factors. Social prescribing is all about holistic wellbeing and placing control of health with individuals, so they can save themselves. Social prescribing link workers play a critical role in helping to reduce inequalities.
- Health inequalities
- Person-centred care
- 7 October 2021
How The Wren Project supports individuals living with autoimmune disease
Alice Peck
The Wren Project is the only charity in the UK to offer free mental health support to individuals living with autoimmune disease. Their goal is to reduce the loneliness, helplessness and isolation felt by many people in distress as a result of their diagnosis.
- COVID-19
- Health inequalities
- 30 September 2021
Health is about much more than healthcare: Why National Voices is supporting the Keep The Lifeline campaign
Dr Rebecca Steinfeld
Three slightly worrying things happened to me this week: my energy supplier went bust, I found the fresh fruit shelves at my local Co-op half empty, and the menu prices at my favourite takeaway skyrocketed. It all felt a bit odd and unsettling. But I am lucky enough – for now at least – to be able to leave it at that. Slightly worrying. A bit unsettling. Nothing more.
- Health inequalities
- 27 September 2021
New training programme: Psychologically Informed Collaborative Conversations
Carole Robinson
A new training programme, developed by the Academic Health Science Network for South London Health Innovation Network has been unveiled to improve consultations with the millions of UK adults living with pain. Psychologically Informed Collaborative Conversations (PIC-C) has been co-produced with patients and one of the patient representatives who fed into the programme was Carole Robinson, who is a volunteer at Kingston Hospital and is a patient rep on many of the hospital’s committees.
- Lived experience
- Person-centred care
- 17 September 2021
What the politics of health and social care looks like a week after ‘social care reforms’ were pushed through
Charlotte Augst
In this blog, Charlotte Augst, National Voices’ Chief Executive, argues that the funding for social care via a rise in National Insurance only begs more questions.
- Health inequalities
- Communication and administration
- 26 July 2021
Chronic Pain Report – A story of mixed emotions
Dr Asim Suleman
“The physician should not treat the disease but the patient who is suffering from it.” (Maimonides 1135 – 1204)
- Person-centred care
- 22 July 2021
Enhanced patient communication must be a central plank in the recovery of elective care
Sean Phillips and Robert Ede
In this blog, Sean Phillips and Robert Ede from the Health and Social Care Unit at Policy Exchange explain how proposals from their new report, A Wait on Your Mind, could improve the experience of patients waiting for treatment, starting with a push to enhance patient communication through the NHS App to make it a front door for information and supportive services, including those offered by the voluntary sector.
- Patient Noun Adjective
- Hospital waiting lists
- Communication and administration
- 30 June 2021
How has the pandemic changed work for people with health conditions?
Amy McSweeney
New research by the Centre for Ageing Better and the Institute for Employment Studies highlights the challenges faced by employees with long-term health conditions, warning that more support is needed to help people manage their conditions in the workplace if the state pension age is to rise further. In this blog, Centre for Ageing Better Evidence Officer Amy McSweeney explains how the pandemic has widened the gap between supportive and unsupportive employers and what the government and employers must do in order to help people manage their health needs.
- COVID-19
- 8 June 2021
Bringing waiting lists back to the people
Miles Sibley
Last year, we contributed to a National Voices report that looked into people’s experiences of being on NHS waiting lists. People talked about a lack of control and an inability to “get on with one’s life”. Some described “fighting” the system, and described the sense of being in an information vacuum for long periods of time.
- Hospital waiting lists
- Communication and administration
- 25 May 2021
Improving healthcare: is it time to ditch the terminology of ‘shared decision making’?
Jo Dagustun
Decisions in healthcare are for the healthcare recipient to make, excepting limited scenarios set out in law. Yet most UK healthcare-related bodies persist in discussing service user decision making under the banner of “shared decision making”. AIMS campaigner Jo Dagustun asks if this is this helpful, or whether it’s now time to ditch the terminology of ‘shared decision making’.
- Person-centred care