What is the vision of your Organisation?
Our Luminus vision is ‘a society where everyone’s voice is heard, so we all receive the support we need for our wellbeing’.
Why has your Organisation signed the ‘End Poverty Pledge’?
We are proud to have signed up to the End Poverty Pledge. We often hear from people about the impact that finances, or lack of, has on their lives and in turn, the impact this has on their wellbeing (we specifically looked at this as part of our mental health engagement, where we found that only half of the people we spoke to knew where to turn to for financial support).
What examples can you give of your Organisation putting the ‘End Poverty Pledge’ into practice?
We support the End Poverty pledge through our everyday work in a variety of ways:
- Ensuring people we speak to are aware of services and benefits available that might help them financially
- Providing information and advice on our website
- Ensuring service providers and decision makers are aware of the impact that financial barriers have when it comes to accessing services.
Our Giving Carers a Voice team often hear about the financial impact of caring and the effect this also has on people’s mental health. Where appropriate they will provide signposting to these carers (often to Action for Carers Surrey, Mobilise and Citizen’s Advice).
Our Healthwatch Surrey Helpdesk provides information for many people who are finding it hard to manage financially. Our Helpdesk Advisors have also provided information about Financial support available for NHS services which is available on our website.
We carried out a piece of research via surveys and community engagement events in areas classified as deprived, with the intention of encouraging uptake of sight tests for children across Surrey. From the responses we are aware that many parents believe the costs of sight tests and glasses are prohibitive and the survey itself provided information to explain the available financial support. We have created a new signposting resource: Sight (eye) tests for children and young people to support parents, particularly those with children who are neurodiverse, available on our website.
We have continued our work regarding sight tests by seeking to understand the barriers that may prevent people from black or Asian communities from accessing sight tests. Through hearing from over 200 people in the community we found that cost was a significant barrier, even for those who thought they needed a sight test, with many people not being sure about NHS entitlements. One of the conclusions in our report: Sight on equity: Understanding the barriers faced by black and Asian minoritised communities when accessing sight tests is that improved awareness regarding NHS entitlements could meaningfully increase uptake.
Surrey County Council commissioned Healthwatch Surrey to understand more about behaviours, motivations and attitudes in planning for care. Our report, Understanding the self-funder journey to living in a care home will help ensure communication is positioned so people are aware at the right stage of seeking care, of both the financial implications and the support that is available.
We have produced information and videos about Continuing Healthcare (CHC) funding as people were contacting our Helpdesk for information. We put together a guide about Continuing Healthcare which is available on our website. We produced 2 new videos, hearing from people who’ve actually been through the process.
Our Living, coping, thriving report, exploring preventative health behaviours of people aged 50-66 in Surrey, highlighted that for some people, their first priority was ‘survival’. Finding work, paying rent, accessing food and transport issues are uppermost in their minds, before thinking about their health and wellbeing.
What would you hope to be able to do more of in the longer term?
We will hold a team lunch and learn specifically on information and signposting around all the support and advice available to those who are struggling financially, to ensure that our whole team is well equipped when out on engagement and can signpost people appropriately.
Ensure when we are at the start of projects that we include poverty in our project initiation discussions, to consider whether poverty is a key issue for the project and if so whether we need to adapt our research methods accordingly.