Day 67: What Matters To You?

All too often targets and measures of outcomes are set centrally without any engagement, consultation nor anything resembling co-production with the people that the outcomes affect.

It is critical e ask, “what matters to you?” before we make any assumptions about what we think, as professionals, is important.

It’s also important to treat patient stories and qualitative information as ‘data’.  This should not be dismissed as unscientific but should be given the value it deserves and used to drive improvement.

Central support for consistency of measurement, but locally derived standards that are meaningful to the people they affect is essential.

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.