Feedback on health and social care in England is being collected unevenly, and the Care Quality Commission, working alongside Healthwatch England, is trying to close that gap. Their joint campaign asks anyone who has used a GP practice, hospital, dental service, care home or homecare provider to share their experience, whether it was reassuring or troubling. The stated aim is straightforward: services cannot improve on problems they never hear about.
Why some voices are missing
The campaign's organisers acknowledge a persistent pattern in public feedback systems - people who already face barriers to good care are also less likely to be asked about it, or to feel their input will change anything. CQC and Healthwatch have named specific groups they want to reach more effectively: people from ethnic minority communities, people on lower incomes, autistic people and people with a learning disability, and disabled people with physical or sensory impairments. These groups are more likely to encounter inequalities within the system, which makes their absence from feedback data a structural problem rather than a minor gap. When regulators build a picture of quality from a narrow slice of users, the resulting picture is incomplete, and services serving the most under-represented patients may escape scrutiny simply because complaints and praise alike go unrecorded.
How the feedback is actually used
This is not a satisfaction survey collected for its own sake. CQC uses what people report to assess the providers it regulates, feeding directly into judgments about safety, effectiveness and leadership at individual services. Positive accounts can highlight good practice worth replicating elsewhere and, the organisers note, can support staff morale - a factor that matters in a workforce under sustained pressure. Negative accounts can surface safety issues that inspections alone might miss, since regulators cannot observe every interaction between a patient and a service. Feedback can be submitted anonymously, though providing contact details makes it possible for CQC to follow up and probe further, which strengthens the evidence base considerably compared with a one-line comment.
A September moment built around community trust
In September 2026, the campaign will pivot to recognise the intermediaries who often make feedback possible in the first place: community organisations, grassroots groups, carers, advocates and online communities. These networks frequently reach people who would never approach a national regulator directly, translating lived experience into a form that formal systems can register. This reflects a broader pattern in public service oversight - trust is often local and relational before it is institutional, and campaigns that route through trusted community intermediaries tend to surface experiences that top-down surveys miss entirely.
Access and practical routes to share experiences
To lower barriers to participation, the campaign has published an easy read version of its feedback form and offers dedicated support for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Local Healthwatch branches provide another route for people who prefer to speak to someone directly rather than complete an online form. Organisations and charities that want to help spread the message can draw on a campaign toolkit designed for that purpose.
- Feedback can be given anonymously or with contact details for follow-up
- An easy read version of the feedback form is available as a PDF
- Local Healthwatch teams offer an alternative to the online form
- A campaign toolkit is available for organisations wanting to promote participation
The underlying logic is one familiar from any regulated service sector: oversight is only as good as the data feeding it. Widening who contributes that data is presented here not as a communications exercise but as a way of making regulation itself more accurate.