Overview

We regularly review the ways we involve people in our work. This helps us to continually improve our systems for involvement, so as many of our residents as possible have opportunities to give their views and experiences about their local NHS.

We use a number of different approaches to assess our involvement activities such as surveys, feedback forms at our events and external assessments of our activity plans through forums like our Engagement and Patient Experience Group and Sefton Council’s Consultation and Engagement Standards Panel.

What people told us

Here are two examples of how we did this in 2018-2019:

We focused a workshop session at our Big Chat 9 for views on how to better involve people.

We invited our residents and partners to take part in a survey about how we can improve.

What people told us:

• Our Big Chat events are informative and a helpful way of sharing views on some of the ideas and plans for developing local health services, but these large scale events are not for everyone
• Big Chats should be more interactive
• Develop our work with partners and community groups, using their events and networks to involve more local residents, particularly those from minority groups
• Continue with our various methods of keeping local people involved and informed but particularly focus on face to face contact, newsletters, local media and online / social media options.

How we responded

We used the views and suggestions we have received about involving you to refresh our communications and engagement strategy, which was approved by our Governing Body in April 2018.

Here are some examples of how we are using people’s feedback to improve what we do:

• With Healthwatch Sefton we are exploring how we can hold more focused and localised engagement events, working with the Community Champion network and GP practice participation groups
• Speaking with Sefton Council for Voluntary Services we carried out a comprehensive mapping exercise to refresh our list of stakeholders, which has helped to put us in touch with some of our most hard to reach community groups, including those representing individuals who are homeless, military veterans and from the gypsy / traveller community
• This year we have got out and about to speak to people at a wide range of events across the area – including older people’s and youth forums - and we have begun a new email newsletter to keep people on our mailing list of opportunities for them to get involved
• At our last Big Chat in 2018, we invited a number of our partners to have marketplace style information stands to make the events broader and more engaging. This evaluated well with both partners and attendees.