Website cookies

This website uses cookies to help us understand the way visitors use our website. We can't identify you with them and we don't share the data with anyone else. If you click Reject we will set a single cookie to remember your preference. Find out more in our privacy policy.

Working with people and communities

Bev Fitzsimons 26 October 2022

Bev talks about the Point of Care Foundation’s work assisting Integrated Care Systems to build relationships with their communities and improve health and care services.

Topics

Compassionate cultureQuality Improvement

In July this year, NHS England and the Department for Health and Social care, issued new statutory guidance on working with people and communities. It aims to support system leaders to work better together to tackle some of the challenges in health and social care. The emphasis is clear: systems need to look beyond ‘the usual suspects’ and work with people and communities more broadly. Potentially this is a game changer for the planning and design of services that truly address the needs of people and what is important to them, as opposed to shoehorning people into current services, offering them the ‘choice’ between the options that already exist.

There is a new duty for organisations to consider the interests of the system as a whole, rather than their own organisations. Old habits die hard, but could this be the end of competition in the sector as we know it?”

The guidance offers 10 principles for working with people and communities. These principles concur very closely with the Point of Care Foundation’s 10 principles for great involvement practice, which are part of our Foundations in Patient Experience programme. Examples include, involvement being a continuous, relationship-based activity, not sporadic or one-off. Work with what is already there: in many places there is a vibrant and active community and voluntary sector that already has the links and connections locally – it makes no sense to reinvent the wheel. And above all, it is vital to learn from what’s effective for working with communities and be willing to change tactics if needed.

The ambition is for health and care systems to build positive, trusted relationships with communities to improve services. This means engagement which is ongoing and not only when proposing changes to services. The goal is to focus on what matters to people and prioritises hearing from people who have been marginalised.

 

Mapping engagement activities

At the Point of Care Foundation, we have embraced this vision by working with ICSs as part of our Implementation Support programme of work. As part of the Beyond: Cheshire and Merseyside Children and Young People’s Transformation Programme, we worked with statutory and voluntary partners across the region to map out the excellent engagement activities already in place across the system. Speaking to third sector organisations with close ongoing relationships with communities highlighted the plethora of knowledge and insight already present and allows the ICS to perform a vital role in connecting communities and focus its efforts on listening to communities that might be heard less often.

The Point of Care Foundation’s principles for high quality engagement and involvement:

  1. Look after people and reward people for their contribution
  2. Involve early and throughout
  3. Be proactive – don’t assume people will come to you
  4. Recognise and adapt to special needs
  5. Ensure there is clarity of purpose and communicate it
  6. Facilitate a service-user led process and create a space for equal partnerships
  7. Use a mix of methods and think ‘beyond the meeting’
  8. Close the feedback loop – communicate the changes
  9. Involvement should benefit the person being involved as well as the service
  10. Understand the evidence and impact of involving and engaging with communities

Citizens Voices project

Another way we support this agenda is through our Citizen Voices project. Through this, we are using our experience of qualitative research to provide training and support to citizen interviewers to gather stories from members of local communities about the aspects of their lives that have the greatest bearing on their well-being. The goal is to commission services that more closely meet the needs of citizens and allow for more creative approaches for meeting their needs to be employed.

“‘It’s important that there are the right mechanisms to capture views and experiences, and to ensure that we avoid engaging with the same people over and over.”  – NHS provider

“When looking at mental health, the focus is on the lived experience of service users, which is important. But what about those who haven’t accessed services, who feel that there aren’t enough or the right services for them? This can’t be gleaned from lived experience testimonies.” – 3rd sector provider

– Interviewees from the Citizen Voices project

Although storytelling and conversation are the most natural of human activities, we understand this is a very different way of working for people more familiar with traditional consultation approaches. It rebalances the power between ‘patient’ and ‘professional’.

Sharing stories and experiences can raise high emotion. As with all our programmes, we offer supportive, structured training and opportunities to practice these approaches in a safe environment.

We’re looking forward to continuing our work with ICS colleagues, to supporting their work to engage with people and communities and make the best use of the connections that already exist. If you are interested in partnering with us in this work, or any of our programmes supporting citizen-centred, personalised care, do get in touch.