Healthwatch Cumberland Project Workplan 2025/2026

Healthwatch Cumberland gathers people’s experiences about health and social care services and uses this feedback to inform NHS leaders and decision-makers, helping to influence change and shape improvements. We monitor the feedback we hear, and emerging themes inform our annual work plan.

Paternal Wellbeing

When children are born, dads can often be left out of support networks and services. This can lead to feelings of isolation and loneliness, and can impact relationships. Our project 'How are you today, Dad?' looked at how we can change the narrative to include dads in the conversation. Becoming a new parent isn't easy and we wanted to find out what support and advice local dads would have liked to have received. This project involved a survey and case studies with local dads.

Trans Voices

Our Trans Voices project was launched to find out about the challeneges faced by local trans and gender diverse people when accessing health and social care services. After receiving feedback about the incredibly lenghty wait times for an appointment with a Gender Identity Clinic, and amongst a background of rising insecurity for trans people, we decided to focus on hearing from local Trans Communities to find out what changes they would like to see. This project involves focus groups, a survey and case studies.

Youth Mental Health

We started 2026 with an ambitious project centred around empowerment and youth mental health. Our project R.I.S.E (Resilience, Inspiration, Self-worth, Empowerment) will look at what young people need in order to have better mental health and improved overall wellbeing. This project will involve interactive workshops and case studies.