Visiting services

Our powers to enter and view lets us visit health and adult social care services to find out what care is like for people. 
 
We'll talk to people who use services, their family, carers and staff to help us understand what care is like.  

About our visits

We use what people tell us and what we know about local services to decide which services to visit. 

We can do either an announced visit - where the provider knows we are coming - or an unannounced visit. 

Most of our enter and view visits are announced. But in the future we could do unannounced visits if we think this is the best way we can get the evidence we need.

After the visit

After our visit we will write and publish a report. We will share this with the people who make decisions about the service we have visited.

And work with service providers to help them make positive changes based on our recommendations. 

We normally publish our report about eight weeks after a visit.

Meet our enter and view team

Our enter and view staff and volunteers have a Standard DBS check and are trained to a high standard.  

They will wear an official badge to identify them when they are visiting a place for us. This includes their name and the date their badges are valid until.

Meet the team

Our enter and view policy

woman looking at camera

Our enter and view work is done using legal powers given to us by the act of parliament that set up Healthwatch. 

We have a duty to write reports and make recommendations to improve services. 

Find out more