Patients, service users and citizens were involved at the early stages and influenced the overall direction and focus areas for clinical pathways and improvements projects.
The CY CHC team worked closely with individuals and families as part of designing and delivering the projects. There were interactive conversations with patients and citizens exploring the general topics of service improvement, opportunities for change and where routine data could play a role.
The team focussed on understanding more about the lives of the people who use the services, the types of services they use in the wider communities, and the outcomes that they themselves identified as being important.
The projects were developed using their experiences and their questions about the services and the care that they received. This engagement took place at a very early stage of the project and continued throughout the duration of the projects. The CY CHC team carried out this work through workshops and informal drop-in sessions, as well as engagement with the citizens. Examples of these activities included attending local events including the Bradford Science Festival in July 2017, 2018 and 2019 and hosting patient/citizen panels. Networks of patient groups from existing research and healthcare projects were also involved in the engagement activities coordinated by CY CHC.
The conversations with individuals and families resulted in new insights about priority areas and some of the questions that came up during the engagement activities were:
‘why is my data not connected’
‘why do I keep repeating my information’ and
‘why is my school not being informed’?
In addition to the wider engagement activities, a patient and public involvement panel was formed to provide a governance structure for the projects. All the providers and participating organisations were provided with clear communications to use with their service users and citizens.
All the interactions with patients and citizens in the early stages led to changes in the way the projects were delivered and informed the overall direction of the project. One of the defining features of the engagement activities was the focus on driving changes for individuals and their families in their unique circumstances whilst delivering population wide impact.
