Healthwatch England

Healthwatch England represents the voice of health and social care users through local Healthwatch branches across England.

They find out what people like about services, and what could be improved, and then share these views with those with the power to make change happen. Healthwatch also help people find the information they need about services in their area.
Research is a key tool used by the organisation to help collect these views.

The Challenge

When the Government published the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health, Healthwatch England wanted to explore current provision of mental health services among twenty-one key groups in the population. To do this, they wanted a literature review which gathered and analysed the existing literature on mental health service provision among the groups. Crucially, they wanted to highlight gaps in the existing literature where further attention is required, to help develop their future focus.

Our approach

Savanta recommended a comprehensive and structured approach to the literature review, providing an example analysis framework in our proposal. Our team had strong experience of research in the mental health sector, and they had completed literature reviews for other organisations. We took a ‘birth to death’ approach for the content, exploring literature on access to mental health services at the perinatal stage, through to elderly mental health and isolation.

The outcome

The report produced by Savanta ComRes is published here . Alongside this, the Savanta ComRes team ran internal workshops at Healthwatch England to discuss the findings and explore what research Healthwatch could do to fill the gaps identified. This led to this research on perinatal mental health, conducted by Healthwatch.