dccg-engagement

Its nearly our due date! You 'got involved’ in developing our new ‘Maternity Matters Dorset’ website which is shortly due to launch. Following the national Better Births review in 2016, the NHS in Dorset sought the views of over 600 families to find out how we could best support them. They told us they wanted ‘one trusted source of local information, information for dads and partners and one place to self-refer’. In response, we worked with local families, midwives, health visitors, our ‘Maternity Voices’ representatives and partner organisations, to co-design the ‘Maternity Matters Dorset’ website - an online guide to pregnancy, [...]

    Written by Frances Aviss Senior Public Engagement Lead at NHS Dorset Clinical Commissioning Group   Just 10 Steps! After two jam-packed days in Bristol and Taunton I am really excited to have completed NHS England’s train-the-trainer course to enable me to deliver “10 steps to even better public engagement”. It’s really important to me to help people understand why meaningful engagement is so important and to be able to support staff and public representatives in developing their public engagement knowledge and skills. I’m really excited by this clear and comprehensive one-day training course. It will complement the 4-day co-design [...]

Dorset Race Equality Council (DREC) Health Ambassadors In December 2018 Dorset Race Equality Council (DREC) hosted the first meeting of a new health ambassador network – a group of people from different ethnic backgrounds who are very active in their respective communities. DREC and the CCG meet with them three to four times a year, which helps the CCG reach out into their communities and help them communicate key messages about health and care services in Dorset and to explore views, needs and understanding of service provision and development. At the first meeting the group spoke about access to health services [...]

Our Supporting Stronger Voices (SSV) Forum was originally designed to enable NHS Dorset CCG to support, inform and involve patient, carer and public representatives from the key community, voluntary and local authority groups that we worked with. Working with Our Dorset Public Engagement Group colleagues in 2018, we reviewed the membership of the group to ensure that all the communities and groups that they worked with were included. Amongst many others, representative town and parish councillors and hospital public governors were invited to join. The objectives of our Supporting Stronger Voices forum are: • the opportunity for public, patient, carer and [...]

Listening to the opinions and experiences of young people about the NHS -  Be Heard. The Integrated Community Children’s Health Service (ICCHS) project aims to help improve physical health services for children and young people. Listening to what young people and their families/ carers have to say is an integral part of this. Last summer, we asked young people in Dorset to tell us what they think about their NHS. We worked with some creative teenagers who helped to design the look and questions that we used. You can read the full report, or see the summary version. The young people [...]

Written by Sue Brazier, Senior Engagement and Communications Coordinator Meet our new PPG Support team members Need help with your recruitment days and PPG projects? I am pleased to announce that we have two new members of staff starting work in January whose roles will be to support the development of a stronger network of PPGs. Jim Gammans and Gill Foott introduced themselves at the November PPG networking event in Weymouth and are keen to start their role supporting PPGs across Dorset.   Jim previously worked in our Continuing Healthcare Team,  and before that in a very public-facing role for Age [...]

Written by Casey Townsend Communications and Engagement Coordinator at Dorset CCG casey.townsend@dorsetccg.nhs.uk #EngagingDorset to work better together Integrated Care System Public Engagement Project In November 2018, the NHS in Dorset, Local Councils, Voluntary organisations and members of the public attended a ‘Discovery Workshop’ to plan how to strengthen public engagement work together. NHS England selected Dorset to be the first of six pilots for this Integrated Care System Public Engagement improvement project. At this event, people debated and discussed possible outcomes which would improve the way all the organisations communicate with the public, and the way the public are involved in [...]

It has been a year since the start of our Public Engagement Group (PEG). In this time the PEG has provided invaluable feedback and a platform for critical thinking about new projects and services. The PEG started in 2017, as an important part of Dorset's Integrated Care System  (which means services provided by the local authorities and the NHS working in a more joined up, coherent way). The PEG is made up of 25 local people. They have a wealth of lived-experience across Dorset’s geography, demography and diversity.  They meet bi-monthly to provide advice, guidance and challenge across a huge variety of areas [...]