• We advocate for patients, carers and service users through events, research, surveys and campaigns
• We work with Government, the NHS, politicians, professions and regulators to improve services, and to strengthen the voice of service users, reflecting the views and experience of our members and of service users
• We host and support a Service User Panel, bringing together a wide range of people currently using health and social care services. Our panel gets involved in debates and consultations, helping to shape decisions at an early stage
• We provide information, help and support to our members, and opportunities for them to influence the health and social care agenda

National Voices recent highlights include:

• Orchestrating a powerful, collective response to key policy initiatives including the White Paper Equity and excellence: Liberating the NHS and associated consultations on commissioning; health outcomes; democratic legitimacy and regulation
• The National Voices  members’ conference on 16 September: No Decision About Me Without me, Making it Real, where Social Care Minister Paul Burstow, MP, listened to a range of responses to the White Paper consultations
• As a partner of the NHS Alliance we launched Whose NHS is it anyway, a manifesto for co-production and community engagement in health, in the presence of junior health minister Earl Howe 
• In June Andrew Lansley MP gave his first speech as Health Secretary at an event co-hosted by National Voices
• And our recent Share the Power campaign in early 2010 raised the profile of issues such as the need for more shared decision making and the need to make it easier for people to comment on their care