What solutions can help make sure everyone gets the health and care they need?

Background

Involve, in Partnership with the Democratic Society, were commissioned by Engage Britain to design and deliver the next phase of the People’s Panel on Health and Care. People’s Panel Two focused on the two priority challenges with health and care across England, Scotland and Wales that the People’s Panel said needed to be addressed first. These were:

1. Workforce: recruiting, training, and retaining social care staff to meet current and future demand. 
2. Communication: poor communication between the NHS and people and how this leads to delays in receiving care and people feeling anxious and distressed, especially those with complex care needs.

Engage Britain brought together people with lived and professional experience of these issues to develop solutions to them in their Ideas for Change work. The People’s Panel played a critical role in the Ideas for Change process, sense-checking ideas, inputting their own, and making sure that they are getting to the heart of the challenges the Panel prioritised during the first phase of the People’s Panel last year.

How People's Panel Two worked

Everyone who took part in People’s Panel One was invited back to People’s Panel Two. Of the 98 Panel Members, 67 returned for People’s Panel Two and many others wanted to remain in touch with the project.

The Panel Members came back together across four weekends between May - September 2022. During these workshops the Panel discussed the following:

Social Care Workforce Discussions

The People’s Panel worked alongside the Social Care Change Group made up of frontline care workers, social care users, and people who run and deliver social care services. The Panel supported the Social Care Change Group to understand why the training, retention and recruitment of social care staff was prioritised as a key challenge, and reviewed and provided feedback on solutions and recommendations identified.  

Communications Discussions

The People’s Panel reviewed examples of best practice communications between the NHS and people, put together by Imperial College Health Partners (ICHP). The Panel thought back to the evidence they heard from the Community Conversations and their own personal experiences to identify what they thought were the most appropriate solutions from these best practice examples to improve communication between NHS and patients and explore how they could be built upon and implemented more widely.

Impact

The package of solutions from this part of the process was shared at political party conferences in Autumn 2022.

Click on this link to find out more about Panel Members’ thoughts on the impact of the People’s Panel. 

Click here to read an exclusive digest by John Hall, the previous Director of Strategy for the Department of Health, on his reflections of the People's Panel and involving people in policymaking. 

 

Involve's Role

Involve, in partnership with the Democratic Society, designed and facilitated People’s Panel Two, alongside supporting Panel Members to comfortably participate in the online process. You can find more information about our partners below.

Our Partners

Democratic Society

The Democratic Society (or Demsoc) work to build a democracy that works for the 21st Century, by supporting:

• People - participation in decisions affecting their lives
• Councils/Governments - who want to involve people in decision-making
• Spaces/Pleases/Systems/Processes - to make this happen

Involve and Demsoc have collaborated on a number of projects together, including: Innovation in Democracy Programme, Waltham Forest Citizens’ Assembly on Hate Crime, Citizens’ Assembly of Scotland & Scotland’s Climate Assembly. You can find more information about Demsoc on their website. www.demsoc.org 

Engage Britain

Engage Britain is a fully independent charity that gives people a say on what matters most to them. We can make our country stronger by taking on its problems together, finding answers grounded in people’s real lives. So we bring people together with different views, knowledge and experiences from across our country. And help them to debate and create the plans for change they want to see. Then we work with them to make those changes happen, helping the British public get closer to those in power. And show how the public’s practical, realistic solutions can benefit Britain. Read more at engagebritain.org.

 

For more information about the project, please get in touch with Maddie at: [email protected]