Healthy Futures consultation wins national award

A consultation that was set up to gather views about changes to health services in the North East of Greater Manchester, has won a national award for its public and patient involvement work.

The Healthy Futures consultation has been named as runner up in the NHS Alliance Acorn Award in the Public and Patient Involvement category.

The NHS Alliance brings together a range of health professionals including Primary Care Trust chief executives, pharmacists, doctors, nurses and practice managers to improve the health service by sharing best practice.

When making their decision, the judging panel looked for the following evidence:

• A sound Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) strategy was in place.
• An innovative and varied approach was used to gather views.
• These views were presented to decision makers and acted upon.
• A robust evaluation was carried out.

The Healthy Futures consultation focused on planned healthcare changes in Bury, Rochdale, Heywood, Middleton, North Manchester, Oldham and Rossendale – affecting more than 800,000 people speaking 149 different languages.

As part of the 17 weeks consultation, a Patients’ Council was established, made up of local people with long term health conditions. The Council’s role was to ensure patients’ concerns were heard and addressed throughout the consultation.

Paul Mainwaring, Chairman of the Patients’ Council says: “We’re delighted with this award. It goes to show that partnership between health organisations and the public and patients really can work. We believe this is just the beginning of a very powerful and meaningful relationship that will highlight just how important it is for people to become involved in the future of their health services and how their views really do count.”

The Council worked alongside the partner Primary Care Trusts and Pennine Acute’s PPI and communications teams to ensure the consultation reached as wide a cross section of the population as possible.

Denise Dawson, the Patient Experience Manager for Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale Primary Care Trust, says: “Ensuring that patients and public are involved in all aspects of healthcare is a priority for us and we are thrilled that this award recognises the importance we placed on this throughout the Healthy Futures consultation. This is testament to the positive and productive collaboration we have with various agencies and organisations in the local area that resulted in a truly inclusive consultation.”
          
Celia Gaze, Healthy Futures Programme Director adds: “We made great effort to be as inclusive as possible throughout the consultation. Our close working relationship with both the Patients’ Council and PPI groups enabled us to reach a significant proportion of the population resulting in us achieving the largest ever health related public engagement and involvement programme for the area.”

Throughout the consultation, an intensive and varied engagement programme of events including meetings, open days, presentations, a touring bus and roadshows, ensured the campaign achieved direct contact with 107,000 people (almost 13% of the population).

Over a 17-weeks period, the Healthy Futures consultation’s achievements included:

• • The campaign bus reached 106,625 people.
• 10,898 people attended 692 information events.
• Of the 227 groups presented to, 141 (62%) were from hard-to-reach communities.
• 349,339 consultation documents were distributed to 1,152 locations. 
• 121,181 posters were distributed.
• 900,000 drinks coasters were distributed in 833 locations.
• The mobile team engaged with 287 people, many of whom were aged 81 or over.
• The Healthy Futures website was visited 4,322 times.
• Documentation was made available in eight languages as well as Braille, audio and large-print versions.

All the feedback was independently analysed by the University of Salford.

The NHS Alliance Annual Acorn Awards ceremony will be held on Friday, 23 November at Manchester International Conference Centre.