Our involvement of people priority

For our Involvement of People priority, we have been looking at 2 areas:

1. Whether community healthcare services are accessible/available to people who are classified as being housebound. 

2. We are also working with Frimley Health to get patients views on the patient Information leaflets given at their appointment.

Involvement of People is a priority across primary care, social care and mental health. The ways in which people access services, and the availability of these services has evolved significantly over recent years, and Surrey residents have consistently shared the impact this has had on them.

The focus of our involvement of people care priority is to challenge the inequity of access which people tell us exists. We do this by seeking to understand the needs of our population and by providing information and advice accordingly. Alongside this we challenge and influence the healthcare system via our seats on a number of local boards and committees. Ultimately, we work to ensure that the population of Surrey know how and when to access primary care services and that services work better together to meet the needs of their local populations.

Recent work under this priority

Our recent work under this priority has included:

  • In collaboration with Frimley Health, in July and August, we sought patients’ views on their information leaflets and whether the leaflets are accessible and useful. Our findings have now been shared with our partners in Frimley who are using them to make their resources more accessible, easier to navigate, and better aligned with patients’ and carers’ needs.
  • We’ve been exploring whether people who are unable to leave their home are having their needs met by community health and care services. As part of this small-scale, qualitative study we conducted detailed interviews at people’s homes and at a carers’ support group. We found that the lack of a formal definition of ‘housebound’ led to a lack of consistency for people needing care in their home, as well as a pervasive lack of understanding and respect, especially evident for people unable to leave their home due to their mental health or neurodiversity. Our report, Home is where the care is? is on our website and is being shared with our system partners to try to instigate some positive change for this often unheard group.
  • We are currently looking the NHS App - why people use it, why they don't, and how it could be improved. We're also interested to know if people use the NHS app to provide feedback on NHS services and how they’d ideally like to provide this feedback. Our online survey about the NHS App is running until the end of January 2026, but we’d also welcome people talking to us about their experiences via our website or Helpdesk.  

Reports and bulletins relating to our current work in this priority are in progress and will be available at the end of September on our reports section on our website.

Reports and bulletins relating to this priority can be found under the Involvement of people category of our reports section on our website.