Our Mission, Priorities and Areas of Focus 2025/26

How we set our priorities: 

We plan our priorities – what  we will focus on – to cover a range of themes for the year ahead, based on information from a mix of sources, and taking into account our capacity as a small team.

Our priorities:

• What we heard from people across West Sussex via our Priority Survey. Members of the public told us about their priorities and key issues via an online and paper survey. Click here to view the summary report. 

• Insight received via our Helpdesk phone line, email and web forms. 

• Assessment of learnings from research projects. 

• Ongoing dialogue and face to face conversations with communities and networks across the county – including with those who may be less heard within the health and care system. 

• Review of neighbouring place priorities. 

• Building on emerging themes and strategies within changing national, regional and local health and social care landscape (e.g. NHS 10 Year Plan and the three ‘shifts’, and focus on inequalities in health, and the 2025 Health and Wellbeing Strategy). 

Areas of focus: 

From our public priority survey and quarterly insight, we learnt that local people would like us to focus on the following areas throughout the next financial year: 

• Healthcare: Access to information and advice 

• Primary care: GP’s including appointments and communication / Dentistry^* 

• Secondary care: Outpatients, discharge, palliative care 

• Adult social care, including discharge^*.  

The staff team met to review priorities and based on engagement, feedback from the last year and completion of an impact assessment, the team would like to propose a focus also on:

• Amplifying voices that are often unheard—particularly those of individuals who have experienced or are currently experiencing domestic abuse or violence. The rising statistics around domestic abuse highlight its growing impact across various areas of health and social care. As a result, we are eager to explore this issue more deeply. 

• Mental health for adults and children.  

The above areas of focus have been submitted to the West Sussex Board for review and approval and have now been approved. These will be picked up and used to devise our workplan and activities throughout the coming year.  

*To note: Completing a priority impact matrix shows that our ability to influence and positively impact on dentistry and adult social care resource is limited due to government funding. Therefore, we will continue to attend local and area wide meetings to feedback insight and keep abreast of changes and send out regular communications as/when available. 

Cross-cutting themes that will underpin all our work: 

• Building trusted relationships and meaningful dialogue with less heard communities and VCSE partners through outreach and collaboration. 

• A core focus on health inequalities, prevention and the ‘wider determinants of health’.

How we will listen to and amplify voices : 

• There will be a continuous programme of opportunities for local people to chat to our team face-to-face, by attending events throughout West Sussex.  

• We will reach out and link collaboratively with grassroots communities and groups across the county. 

• We will support, enable and champion meaningful dialogue between local residents and West Sussex health and care decision-makers. 

• We will deliver a rolling programme of ‘Enter and View’ visits into health and care settings, including regular visits to acute hospitals. 

• We will hear from local people via our telephone helpdesk, our website, social media platforms, online and paper surveys, and using creative and accessible community research approaches. 

• We provide the Independent Health Complaints Advocacy Service (IHCAS), supporting local people with NHS complaints. 

• We will make the views and experiences of people known to Healthwatch England (and to other local Healthwatch organisations), providing a steer to help them carry out their role as the national health and care public champion.