News & reports

Last year, Healthwatch Reading brought local people together for our Dying Well community conversation. Residents, carers and professionals shared their experiences of end-of-life care, highlighting the need for earlier conversations, better information, clearer signposting and greater awareness of support available. These findings closely mirror the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman's recent report, Conversations that Matter Most, which found that people and familie

Listening to your experiences and amplifying your voices to help shape local healthcare services. Each voice matters. Behind every experience is an opportunity to improve care not only for individuals, but also for communities across Reading. Thank you for sharing your experiences and views with us. We have shared them with key decision-makers g to ensure local services reflect lived experiences and local voices. "More recently, our role has matured further—from listening an

Our evaluation report, which features recommendations on Reading’s Community Wellness Outreach Programme, is now live. What is the Community Wellness Outreach programme? In 2022/23, only 6%* of eligible local people (aged 40–74 who hadn’t had a check in the previous five years) accessed a free NHS Health Check at their GP surgeries. It was also clear that some people from different communities across Reading were not attending their GP at all. To address this, the Community W