Word on the Street: What We Heard This Quarter (Q3 2025/26)
About this publication
Word on the Street is a quarterly snapshot of themes and patterns emerging from conversations with local people. It brings together lived experience shared with Healthwatch Stockton‑on‑Tees to help partners understand what people are encountering across the local health and care system.
This publication is intended as an insight and intelligence‑sharing tool, not a report making recommendations or seeking formal responses from individual services. Feedback is anonymised and presented at a thematic level to highlight system‑wide issues and support collective discussion and improvement.
This is what residents have been telling us across Stockton-on-Tees, including their experiences of:
- GP services
- Hospital care
- Mental health
- Pharmacy & Prescriptions
- Accessibility and Communications
- Dentistry
- Wider system challenges
“People continue to struggle with digital barriers, especially the NHS App.”
The update features patient stories (anonymised) to reflect what people have shared with us this quarter. It also highlights the regional programmes we’ve contributed to this quarter:
- End of Life, Palliative Care and Death Engagement
- PCARP (Primary Care Access Recovery Programme)
- Winter Pharmacy Services Testing
- WorkWell Focus Groups
- Dentistry & Oral Health Strategy
- Women’s Health
Finally, the update highlights the impact of our recently published local reports:
“Lack of pharmacy provision in Stockton town centre is a growing concern.”
Downloads
Thank you to everyone who shared their health and care experiences with us and to the organisations, groups and services that have contributed to the reports.
If you would like any further information about the themes in this update, or if there is anything you would like to discuss further, please do contact us.
If you would like to share the update, you can download it below.
