Voices for Improvement – How to get involved

What are we doing?

During 2020, National Voices and the Q community are collaborating on a co-design project, supported by the Health Foundation, aimed at developing stronger mechanisms for connecting and supporting service users and patients involved in improvement. We will also be working with the Rosamund Snow community. This work will surface and connect current learning, practice and people in this area and co-develop ideas for convening and boosting impact.

We held an introductory webinar on Friday 31 January. There were several key points raised by those of you who joined us:

• Get the basics right: focus on how we will work together and don’t waste anyone’s time
• Don’t reinvent the wheel: learn from what has gone before and connect with others doing similar work
• Demonstrate value and results: stay focussed on impact and sustainability
• Listen to marginalised groups and create space for new people to be heard
• Influence strategically: let’s be ambitious
• Foster culture change: be the change we want to see
• We won’t be short of ideas: there’s lots of enthusiasm and generosity

What do we want to achieve?

Like all co-design processes, it is difficult to predict what the outcome of this process will be. We are going to explore the opportunities to:

• Bring a diverse and inclusive group of patients service users and carers together to explore the opportunities to improve health and care based on their experiences.
• Listen to the needs and ambitions of under-represented groups who use services, with a focus on how unequal such experiences can be.
• Add value to the work National Voices members and other stakeholders do in this space, rather than duplicating or competing with them.

Get involved and help shape ideas

Over the next two months we are gathering information and ideas and we need your help. There are three ways you can get involved:

1. Provide us with examples: Tell us where service users and carers on the one hand and health and social care organisations on the other work well together. We want to know who is getting patient and service user involvement right and what helps them succeed in changing practice, services or policy. We are looking for examples that others can learn from.
2. Share contacts and connections: Tell us about organisations and partners you think we should contact to learn with and involve in this project.
3. Check and challenge – Join our Advisory Group: Apply to be a member of our ‘check and challenge’ advisory group. We are looking for a small group of people from the National Voices membership, the Q community and the Rosamund Snow community to join our advisory group. This group will inform, check and challenge the direction and delivery of this project between April and November.

How to apply

• Read the background information
• Submit an expression of interest in writing or by a short video

The deadline for submissions will be 5pm on Thursday 19 March 2020.