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Working with people and communities 2022/23

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Join the North East London Citizens’ Panel and have your say!

We are proud of what we have achieved since our new organisation was formed in July 2022. This section showcases our engagement work during the 2022 to 2023 financial year.

In our Working with People and Communities Strategy we set our vision and standards for participation. These are:

What we’ve set out to achieve

We are committed to putting people participation at the heart of our work from the earliest opportunity. Public voice should be present in all our activities. We will achieve this by:

  • Developing an infrastructure of participation and co-production within our governance and leadership, ensuring Healthwatch, the voluntary and community sector and local people working alongside us are given clear roles and responsibilities and treated and taken seriously as an equally valued voice and partner, whilst honestly acknowledging differences in power and resources between those taking part
  • Truly listening to people and providing opportunities for local people to be involved in planning and decision-making in a wide variety of ways including co-production or co-design of services where appropriate
  • Being clear about what everybody is here for and what we are going to achieve
  • Ensuring we give something back to people who are involved in our work. This could include training, acknowledgement, new skills, credit vouchers or payment
  • Developing a culture of honesty and transparency, committing to evaluation and learning from our mistakes
  • Providing our staff with the skills and knowledge to listen and act upon feedback from local people to ensure that participation and co-production is part of the culture and individual staff development of the Integrated care system (ICS).
  • Developing mechanisms for our people and communities to hold the Integrated care system to account for its commitment to participation and the outcomes of that participation

Our progress in 2022 – 23

  • There is variation across north east London in how people are rewarded and recognised for working with us and taking part in engagement activity. Agreeing a consistent approach to reward and recognition across the Integrated care board was a key commitment in the strategy and significant progress has been made with our final proposals being agreed at our Executive Leadership Team. We are now working on the implementation of our policy
  • Training and development for our staff to truly ensure that participation is everybody’s business is essential. We are scoping out what a training and development offer ICS-wide should look like, building on existing resources from across the system.

What we’ve set out to achieve

We will talk to each other and identify where we can work together to achieve a high standard of participation with the communities we serve by:

  • Building on the collaborative work we have already undertaken to integrate care, manage population health, tackle health inequalities and ensure productivity
  • Ensuring that all partners are brought together to plan at the earliest possible opportunity, including Healthwatch and the community and voluntary sector
  • Developing joint priorities and messaging, and avoiding duplication
  • Sharing best practice and championing innovation
  • Finding common solutions to collective challenges
  • Developing how our joint standards will be delivered, resourced and evaluated

Our progress in 2022 – 23

  • As set out in the strategy the North East London Integrated Care System Engagement and Participation Working Group is keen that it is developed into a broader North East London Engagement and Participation Network or Community of Practice and a sub-group of the working group has been developing what this might look in practical terms, based on feedback from people working or volunteering in this space. There is a particular focus on bringing local authority colleagues closer into this network, recognising the resource pressures from their perspective
  • We are supporting increased collaboration at each place level through colleagues, the VCSE and Healthwatch networks, and a greater role in decision making through the place-based partnerships
  • More broadly as we confirm our Integrated Care Board (ICB) and Integrated Care System decision-making arrangements we have increased resident, service user, patient and carer participation – notably within the proposed membership of the mental health learning disability and autism collaborative sub-committee, with Healthwatch as a participant observer fully contributing at the ICB Board and development sessions, plus through Healthwatch membership of the Integrated Care Partnership (ICP) committee and ICP Steering Group.

What we’ve set out to achieve

We will share insight and produce plans based on evidence and feedback from our local people. We will do this by:

  • Using a range of insight gathering tools including the North East London Community Insight System, commissioned from our local Healthwatch using a wide range of existing and bespoke insight from local people and the North East London Citizens Panel
  • Identifying where we have common priorities and coordinating the sharing of relevant insight for example around our agreed flagship priorities of employment, mental health, children and young people and long-term conditions, with an emphasis on prevention
  • Having structures in place which ensure we build and develop our work based on existing feedback and insight
  • Making sure we are asking the right questions when we seek insight and experience from local people
  • Using insight and evidence to identify communities most impacted by health inequalities and those seldom heard to target, encourage and enable participation

Our progress in 2022-23

  • As set out in the strategy, there is work to do to better share insight across the ICS footprint. The North East London Community Insight System (CIS) is a valuable tool, and an awareness campaign will be underway shortly to encourage partners to both input into the CIS and make good use of the rich data and insights it holds. A training programme has been developed and is being tested, to be followed by an offer of training for our transformation programmes and those teams linked to our ICS flagship priorities. Our words are being put into action as the Integrated Care Partnership Health and Care strategy is being developed, first checking the insight we have through the system before asking questions for which local residents have already shared their views.  A series of reports by strategy theme have also been produced to inform the strategy
  • Our NEL ICS Residents Panel, which includes over 2000 local people from a range of backgrounds and places across NEL, has undergone a comprehensive review. The next phase will be working alongside panel members to ensure it is as an effective tool as it can be and offering a variety of ways to get involved in our work

What we’ve set out to achieve

We will ensure participation is accessible to all local people by:

  • Exploring together how best we as organisations from across north east London can collectively remove barriers to participating in engagement activities
  • Being clear about the role of an integrated care system
  • Providing transparent access to all the relevant information and giving people the tools they need to participate, the support and training available and how they will be rewarded
  • Utilising community development approaches and reducing inequity in our participation activities
  • Purposefully seeking to hear from and involve a diversity of local people and communities
  • Ensuring that we are actively using the Accessible Information Standards and providing information in community languages and plain English
  • Ensuring our spaces and venues are easy to access for all
  • Ensuring people are supported to use online platforms and technology and provide training where required
  • Ensuring children and young people are involved and catered for where appropriate

Our progress in 2022-23

  • Progress with embedding Accessibility Information Standards across the ICB is underway, with proposals for an ICB Accessibility Champions
  • A specific project aimed at improving the experiences of people who are deaf and hard of hearing is making real headway, with a number of our partners looking at how improvements can be made and an appetite for approaching this as a system. Existing feedback and insight both nationally and from local people across north east London continue to identify two areas which, if improved, would have real positive impact: a consistent approach to British Sign Language (BSL) interpretation and rolling out of training to frontline staff. Scoping of current BSL arrangements across both primary and secondary care as well as recommended training providers is underway.

What we’ve set out to achieve

We will be responsive to the local voice by:

  • Asking local people how they would like to be involved to ensure we are hearing their voice in a meaningful way
  • Being clear about the way in which our communities can influence design and decisions, then following through and implementing change based on their influence
  • Keeping local people informed about the way we have implemented change as a result of listening to what they told us
  • Sharing responses in a timely manner and ensuring that where people have fed in their thoughts and experiences they are kept informed about outcomes
  • Understanding that the diverse communities we serve will experience services differently, and tailoring our approach to be responsive to their respective needs
  • Providing clear evidence of the impact of individual and collective participation, providing ongoing feedback
  • Supporting people and communities to evaluate participation and developing mechanisms for their oversight of implementation

Our progress in 2022-23

  • We are working with partners to develop a consistent approach to patient stories and case studies, both in terms of how we share these amongst partners but also how they are communicated at Boards and committees. Equally important is how we are evidencing action taken based on the feedback.

Our work is separated into the geographical areas we work in and each piece of work links back to the vision and standard that it meets.

Related Links

Downloads

Working with People and Communities Strategy 2022/25

This strategy sets out our vision to ensure participation is at the heart of everything we do.

Download

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