The purpose of this report is to provide the committee with information relating to the intentions of Herefordshire Clinical Commissioning Group to undertake a county-wide public engagement programme relating to community health provision. 

The director of operations, Herefordshire Clinical Commissioning Group, presented the slides (appendix a), making the following key points:

•      The intended approach to engagement was informed by feedback from engagement work carried out by Healthwatch.

•      The vision was to empower patients to access the right care in the right place at the right time. This was represented in diagrammatic form as a blue print model which would be a talking point during engagement with communities. The blue print model was designed to show how support should begin within communities, around the person, with short-term specialist services reaching in.  It sought to ensure all services used the same language and shifted to an integrated approach.

•      The scope for engagement was wide, with top level strategic engagement and primary care working together to ensure that services were appropriate for managing both physical and mental health care needs. Engagement processes differed for urban and rural areas, with differing priorities and solutions, so the intention was to focus on localities.  

•      It was recognised that the distinction between engagement and consultation was not clear to everyone, so this had been explained in presentations. However, the patient story was the key and the critical point was for people to be able to tell the CCG about their experiences and whether they are getting access to the right support. Some sessions included one to one conversations to talk about specific issues and other approaches were more collective.

•      A key emerging theme was that people wanted help to remain as well as possible; the Healthwatch engagement was helping to draw out themes which were published online and would be used to feed back to communities and encourage further engagement.

•      There were various approaches to reaching communities including social media, although some aspects of this needed refining to ensure it was locality focused. 

•      A number of future events were arranged and details were on the ‘your conversation’ website. There was encouragement for communities and individuals to spread the word and members were asked to suggest other groups.  This approach was intended to identify some firm proposals for consultation and it was hoped that these would reflect back in the consultations so that people could recognise them.

Members made a number of observations and suggestions for developing the engagement during the presentation. These included:

•      That the pathways and support for people could be expanded and further examples made available so that people were better informed to know that they were receiving appropriate care and support for their condition. It was noted that not all people understood the various care pathways, such and what happens between seeing a GP and attending hospital and what support is available in the community, including the signposting role of WISH.

•      That the local radio such as BBC Hereford and Worcester would be an effective way of reaching people, such as through a phone-in session which would encourage engagement of people who did not use online social  ...  view the full minutes text for item 8