Our 2025 Annual Meeting: Community Voices and Health Priorities
Healthwatch Croydon Chair Edwina Morris opening the event by highlighting the key projects the healthwatch croydon project team had delivered in recent months. Reports such as, Neurodiversity and Healthcare Access – Patient Perspectives, Croydon residents’ experiences of intermediate care and reablement services, Health inequalities report for the Croydon Health and Care Plan and Croydon residents’ experiences of eye care services all of which can be read here. Our chair also addressed the recent news concerning the DASH review and the proposed closure of Healthwatch England, giving ressurance that Healthwatch Croydon are still here and committed to representing the patient voice.
We also heard from Cllr Margaret Bird, Deputy Chair of the Croydon Health and Wellbeing Board, who spoke of the vital contribution Healthwatch Croydon makes to health prioraties in the bourough, comments which are warmly recieved, please view her comments in the video below.
As part of the event, Healthwatch Croydon partnered with Croydon Council to help deliver an engagement prioraty exploring six priorities for Croydon’s health and care strategy. The report for this will be published in the next few week so stay tuned for updates.
Finally, we invited members of the audience comprised of Croydon resident, key stakeholders and partners to ask questions on the key health and social care issues that matter to them most. On the panel was Dr Subhro Banerjee, (Croydon Health Services NHS Trust Chief Medical Director), Sarah Burns, (Group Chief Executive Officer for Croydon Voluntary Action and Reedham Children’s Trust), and Gill Biju (Croydon’s GP Collaborative Chief Executive) and Bianca Byrne, Director of Adults Social Care, Commissioning, Policy and Improvement at Croydon Council.
The panel potion of the event provided thoughtful discussions, with audience questions covering topics such as the importance of culturally appropriate services in Croydon, challenges in accessing neurodiversity support, and care for those with sickle cell and proposed future therapies such as gene editing.
We ended the event with a refreshment fueled networking session, thanking all attendeees who contributed to the evening. We look forward to working with you in the months ahead.
