Pharmacy staff should undertake disability awareness training and make links with day centres and other local community services, according to a Healthwatch report on pharmacies in Lambeth.

Every local Healthwatch has a responsibility to carry out an ‘enter and view’ programme, which involves visiting publicly funded health and social care services to see what is happening and talk to service users, their relatives and carers, as well as staff. Healthwatch Lambeth carried out enter and view visits with trained learning disabled adults and their support workers to six healthy living pharmacies between January and March.

Results were positive, with feedback including: “This is what a pharmacy should be like”, and, “the visit has made me feel happier to ask staff questions about my health”. Other recommendations included:

• All pharmacies should have some easy read materials available, ideally on display
• Pharmacies should consider how to improve their physical accessibility
• Pharmacies should have clear information about health check charges for people who have to pay.

By drawing on insights from the visits, the Healthwatch team hoped that good practice could be supported and extended across all HLPs in Lambeth and that the learning disabled community could develop greater confidence in using pharmacy services more effectively.