At the beginning of 2021, we began asking local people what they thought about the health and care services provided in Southport, Formby and West Lancashire under the banner Shaping Care Together.

We have listened throughout that engagement and now published Our Challenges and Opportunities, an engagement document that represents the next step in our journey to involve residents in designing high-quality health and care services that are sustainable for years to come.

Our local health and care organisations aim to provide safe, compassionate and high-quality care. However, some challenges described in the document, such as issues with buildings and sites, challenges with recruitment and retention, and the location of some services and how people access them, demand new ways of working and new ways of providing care.

We believe that by working together with you, we can do more to improve the health and wellbeing of the people we serve. Local people have shared their continued enthusiasm and passion for exploring key opportunities for better services. These include:

• How we use technology to deliver better joined up care – so people only have to tell their story once
• Working better with community health services will mean people with complex health and care needs can live independently in their own home for as long as possible. This will avoid people being in hospital unnecessarily

Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust and neighbouring St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust have also formed a partnership that will help both organisations make the very best use of their resources

We want to continue to hear from you – residents, patients, families, staff, and carers – and your thoughts, feelings, and ideas about local healthcare before we develop a long list of potential solutions to tackling the key challenges.

We are also holding some online Zoom engagement events to offer a chance to hear more about the programme and how we can work together to provide better care. They are:

• Wednesday 16 March: 10.30 to midday – register here
• Thursday 17 March : 6pm to 7.30pm – register here

All your thoughts are important to us, but we would particularly like to hear your thinking on what we could do to improve the care provided to patients in some key areas.  It’s all explained on the Shaping Care Together website where you can take our survey here. You can also get in touch via email.