Celebrating our Patient and Carer Experience and Involvement Strategy – a year on!
Since launching our new Patient and Carer Experience and Involvement Strategy ‘Together’ in April 2020, we’ve made huge progress in working towards satisfying the priorities identified by service users and carers.
Despite the pandemic, the newly established Patient Experience Team has continued to work alongside service users, carers and staff members to ensure that the patient and carer voice is influencing positive change.
You can watch some of the highlights of the first year of the strategy in our animation or read more in this bulletin.
The three year strategy has three main priorities to ensure as a Trust we will:
- Ensure patients, service users and carers are involved in all aspects of their care
- Develop ways to collect, understand and act on patient, service user and carer feedback
- Develop support services and signpost carers, family and friends of our patients to relevant agencies
A major part of the new ways of working has been to increase links with partner organisations. This has helped draw on the expertise of others as well as broadening the input of service users, carers and health and care professionals.
Over the year more than 50 meetings and events were held, many online, including Service User Network (SUN) meetings, sub-group meetings and Trust-wide feedback groups.
One of the biggest highlights of the year was the co-production of a new Trust-wide feedback process called ‘Have your say’. This has involved introducing new ways for service users and carers to let us know about the experiences of our services. Their feedback will help us to celebrate what is going well, and also identify areas which we need to change.
The Trust’s Service User Network (SUN) has continued to go from strength to strength with more than 150 people being kept updated and actively involved in a variety of activities and opportunities including meetings, newsletter production, and attending Spotlight on Services meetings. The SUN meeting is co facilitated by Service users and members identify what they want on the agenda for each meeting.
Cathy Woffendin, Executive Director of Nursing Quality and Professions at the Trust, said: “Listening to the views and experience of our service users and carers and encouraging them to become involved, is essential if we are to continue providing and improving our high quality, safe and effective services.
“Even in such exceptional circumstances as the past year, it is a testament to the dedication of the Patient Experience Team and the people they have been working with, that so much progress has been made. I would encourage everyone who has experienced our services directly, or as a carer, to consider getting involved in helping shape our future.
“I would also like to personally thank all of our service users and carers who give their precious time to share with us their views and experiences its greatly appreciated and allows us all to learn and improve together.”
If you’d like to know more about the Together strategy or get involved in our opportunities, please email patientexperience.lypft@nhs.net or call 0113 855 6840.