Day 82: How are things for you?

Today at Operating Board we heard from one of our service users in supported accommodation.  He joined via video link with his support worker, and we heard about his life and what he got up to daily. 

He expressed happiness with his lot but lamented the passing of his parents, speaking fondly of the time he spent living with them.  As an Operating Board we explored with him what we could do to make his life more enjoyable to support his independence.

It’s a privilege to hear directly from the people we support to root us back in our purpose.

Day 24: User Engagement

There has been a huge amount written over the years on Ladder of Engagement, which takes you from sharing information all the way up to genuine co-production.  There is great opportunity now for a shift-change in how we partner with people to develop services that help them to meet their outcomes through excellent experiences.

We must be purposeful in our approach to this, saying, meaning, and resourcing our approaches to co-production with the people who have the greatest knowledge of what excellence looks like and what it means to have bad experience – they are the people who use our services.

Day 31: Communications & Engagement

My first meeting of our Communications & Engagement Steering Group today.  We discussed our engagement with patients & communities about our commissioning intentions, acknowledging it isn’t the most exciting subject, but we have improved on last year and there is more we will do.

Further discussion on who and how we engage public in upcoming procurement for our mental health & community services.

We reviewed progress in our social marketing campaign 'Is A&E for Me'.  Much success in local engagement activities, but need to see this in changed behaviours - more info here.

We also discussed developing a social media strategy and agreed we need to focus on embedding social media in other strategies, projects & plans and to do a few things well rather than try to do too much.

Finally, we’re recruiting for a new Lay Board Member to lead on engagement & empowerment.  Advert is here, do take a look and share with anyone you think would be suitable.