News and reports

North Tees & Hartlepool and South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trusts have come together under a ‘Group Model’ to improve healthcare across Tees Valley, North Yorkshire, and County Durham. The joint trusts will hereby be referred to as University Hospitals Tees. This report summarises the findings of a community engagement project led by the Healthwatch Tees Valley Network, which gathered feedback from patients, carers, and the wider community to help the hospitals focus on areas for improvement. Read on to find out what recommendations were made.

Home care services involve care workers visiting a person in their home, providing assistance with important daily tasks that the individual cannot manage to do independently. People of all ages access home care services, but people aged over 65 are the largest single user group. Home care service provision is means tested, with some people receiving services free of charges, others paying part of the cost and some the full cost of services.

Read on to find out the outcome of HWH doing this piece of work

There is little research regarding the lives of older people with learning disabilities, such as health issues, the illness or death of a family member and how this can affect a person with a learning disability and impact on their behaviour. The particular focus of this project is to improve support for families, carers, and older people with learning disability (aged 40+ to reflect the early onset of chronic health conditions such as dementia) by producing effective recommendations.

Read our report to find out what matters most to people in the Tees Valley

On 15th October 2024 Healthwatch Hartlepool held a discussion session to gather feedback from the general public and members, on NEAS services and understand how services are meeting the needs of the community. Suggestions for improvements were also discussed.

On 27th January 2025 Healthwatch Hartlepool conducted an Enter and View visit to West View Lodge. The visit was our first to the home in two years and due its size and complexity was conducted by a six person visiting team.

Brierton Lodge is situated in a residential area in the south of Hartlepool.
It provides personal and nursing care for up to 58 older people some of
whom are living with dementia. The home accommodates people over
two floors in one adapted building.

Sheraton Court is a purpose built care home in the north of Hartlepool offering general residential and residential memory care for those living with dementia. It is a large 80 bed home, and all rooms are en-suite. Primary care categories include dementia, older person care, physical disability, respite care and sensory impairment. This was the first visit to Sheraton Court since before the outbreak of the Covid Pandemic in 2020.

On December 4th 2023 Healthwatch Hartlepool conducted its first ever visit to Merlin Manor. In the report which was published following the visit recommendations were made in relation to areas in which it was considered development was required. Consequently, a return visit to Merlin manor was scheduled to take place within 12 months of the original visit to review progress.

The Teeswide Safeguarding Adults Board is a statutory body working across the four local boroughs to effectively prevent and respond to adult abuse.

The Healthwatch Hartlepool Annual report for 2023/24 is now available to view or download.

Click here to download!

Healthwatch Hartlepool recognises that many people in Hartlepool are significantly affected by health inequalities and high levels of ill-health. The delivery of supportive and appropriate hospital discharge services in the town are vital and play a major part in ensuring patients experience and subsequent recouperation are maximised.
On completion of our Hospital Discharge report in March 2023 various recommendations were made and Healthwatch Hartlepool undertook to re-visit the service early in 2024 to speak to patients and assess how the service has developed over the past year.

Merlin Manor is a new, purpose built care home situated on the Bishop Cuthbert estate in Hartlepool. It is registered to provide personal and nursing care for up to 94 people. The home supports older people, those with physical disabilities or sensory impairments and people living with dementia. At the time of our visit there were 78 residents.