Cecily Mosedale's experience as a 16-17 year old volunteering at Healthwatch

When I started volunteering two surveys had just been completed. The first one was about whether the GP surgeries were accessible enough for everyone, including disabled people and people unable to speak English. Looking particularly looked at their websites and appointment booking systems. I helped sort through the responses so feedback could be given to the GP surgeries so they would know how they could become more inclusive. The second survey was on care homes which looked after dementia patients.  I helped create an Excel spreadsheet which recorded meta-analysis of the responses (provided by the care homes, care home workers, the patients themselves and their families.)  We tried to identify the most common issues faced by not only the dementia patients but also their careers and fed back the results to the care homes. Reading the responses to this survey highlighted to me how issues at first glance I thought were minor can have a major impact on someone’s quality of life.  

I also helped analyse a survey Healthwatch undertook about teenagers’ access to mental health support.   It showed that many teenagers choose not to take the support offered because often the appointments were a long way from home and teenagers were sceptical the medical profession could help them. In the autumn of 2023, I actually helped Healthwatch carry out a survey.  We used the giraffe installations in Croydon at that time as places to engage with members of the public and asked questions about people’s experience with healthcare and in particular waiting times and quality of service.  I had to arrange leave of absence from my school.  At first, I was rather nervous but having done it once I will be much more confident next time about approaching random members of the public to take part in a survey. 

After this, Croydon Healthwatch moved onto another major project about the pros and cons of virtual wards.  I helped by undertaking some initial research into the subject and summarized my findings in a poster.  I gained experience in finding reliable online resources about the NHS and learned a lot about virtual wards, which was a concept I had not come across before. 

I think that it is a promising prospect for the NHS as it would help solve the shortage of hospital beds, however it would not help with saving money or making work easier for staff. Then I moved onto helping out with research into what support social services and the NHS provided for people with neurodiversity. I learnt about support groups that existed that I had no idea of before.  I also learnt about the different types of neurodivergence and how they are diagnosed and treated.  

My understanding of how much support with long term health conditions is offered in Croydon was expanded when I visited the meeting between the social support groups in Croydon such as Diabetes UK and bark.com. This gave me an opportunity to talk to the different organisations offering social services and learnt about the different ways they can provide help and the importance about people knowing these supports exist, so that they can access the help they offer.    

Working at Healthwatch also gave me insights into the running of organisations such as the importance of keeping up with emails and ensuring that the output was professionally presented.  While I was at Healthwatch it changed management and Healthwatch had to transfer its website over.  This was a useful insight into how much work is involved in maintaining a professional website. 

And so, in conclusion, I am very grateful to be given this opportunity by Healthwatch and I think it has given me more confidence in pursuing a career in medicine. has been a large learning experience for which I am very grateful. Through attending meetings, I have gained a greater understanding of the problems that people face with accessing healthcare, through researching things like neurodivergence and virtual wards I have expanded my knowledge on medical subjects. But more importantly, after talking to people, reading survey responses, and hearing stories I’ve been told about people’ experiences, I understand how important Healthwatch is in ensuring that everyone has access to good healthcare. As from personal experience from volunteering I have learnt about how other peoples lives were ruined by either a medical mistake or from not having access to healthcare and how it had such a tremendous effect on their quality of life.