Community Engagement Group and Patient Voice Representation Proposal - November 2024

Meeting: Trust Board – Public Meeting

Date: 6 November 2024

Report Title: Community Engagement Group and Patient Voice Representation Proposal

Agenda Item: PUB24/11/4.4

Author: Rachel Morris, Head of Patient Experience and Engagement

Lead Director: Simon Chase, Chief Paramedic and Director of Quality

Purpose: Decision/Approval; Discussion/Review

Link to CQC domain:

Responsive
Effective
Well Led

Link to Strategic Objective:

Be an exceptional place to work, volunteer and learn
Be excellent collaborators and innovators as system partners

Link to Strategic Risk:

SR2: Failure to achieve continuous quality improvements and high-quality care delivery
SR7: Failure to ensure a well-governed and accountable Trust

Equality Impact Assessment: No negative impact identified

Previously considered by: N/A

Recommendation: Consideration that representatives from the CEG attend Public Board and present a quarterly report, highlighting patient voice and feedback from members of the public on issues they feel are relevant. To increase the influence of the public voice at all levels of the organisation. It is further recommended that the CEG and the Patient Safety Partners attend committee meetings applicable to their areas of involvement (and relevant meetings feeding into those committees), with the support of the Head of Patient Experience and the Head of Patient Safety.

Purpose: To consider a reporting mechanism to the Board from the Community Engagement Group (CEG) and improve that Patient and Public voice is considered in the Committee and Board decision-making within the Trust.

Executive Summary:

Proposals to improve patient and public voice within the Trust and formalise patient representatives’ attendance at committee and Board meetings.

CEG members and Patient Safety Partners aim to undertake a suggested quarterly attendance (one member) at Board and in between they will attend Quality Governance, People, Performance, and Audit Committee twice per year.

This will equate for around one meeting per month in order to manage their time and for the Patient Experience/Safety team to support.

The intended launch is from 2025 with a review to be undertaken in January 2026.

Introduction / Background:

The Community Engagement Group (CEG) exists to support the Trust to increase its scope of public engagement and involvement. The group supports the Trust by running their own public engagement events in areas of health promotion, awareness of the ambulance service and what to expect when you call 999, seeking feedback or input on Trust initiatives along with offering first aid training in conjunction with Community First Responders (many of the Community Engagement Group are also CFRs for the Trust).

In addition, the Community Engagement Group fulfils a “critical friend” role for the Trust, providing a public voice and sense-checking function, inputting into various Trust strategies and developments, and attending meetings within the Trust to represent the patient and public voice.

Recently, a member of the CEG attended Public Board alongside a volunteer story video, which detailed experiences of volunteering for the Trust from both members of the CEG and staff who have given up their time to run or attend public engagement events. The Trust Chair has also attended CEG meetings on many occasions, where the CEG have voiced their wish to increase their representation of the public and patient voice feeding into the Board.

It was therefore agreed for the Head of Patient Experience to work with the CEG to offer a proposal around improving attendance at Board and below within the paper offers a number of options on how this may look.

In addition, a first edition CEG report has been provided along with this proposal to highlight the work undertaken and how this may be reported going forward.

Key Issues / Risks:

The CEG are a small volunteer group who are currently reliant on a few key members with the skills and ability to attend Trust strategic meetings and compile appropriate reports for these committees and the Board.

In our planning for how to increase their representation throughout the Trust’s governance structure, we must consider how to make this realistic and sustainable for those individuals involved as well as maximising impact.

It is proposed that initially a group of elected CEG members with the skills and ability to collate CEG feedback into a report format and present it at Board will be responsible for these tasks. This group will mentor and support other CEG members to observe and have input and develop the skills necessary to undertake these tasks themselves. This will lead to a wider pool of CEG members being able to undertake these tasks on behalf of the CEG, and skill development will serve as an incentive to encourage further involvement.

The agreed reporting format aims to strike a balance between meeting the needs of the Trust and reporting on areas of Board focus and interest, and not constraining the feedback that the CEG members are able to provide.

Following this proposal, a first edition report has been complied using the following headings as a suggested format to serve as a structure for the Board report. With its aim to ensure that a focus remains on patient engagement and voice, whilst still allowing freedom to report what they feel is important.

Number of patient and public engagement events held in last quarter.
Trust meetings attended by CEG in last quarter.
Themes and trends arising from patient engagement events.
Themes and trends arising from other areas of CEG activity (eg. strategic involvement, complaints reviews, IPC audits, etc.)
Issues CEG wish to escalate to the Board.
CEG recruitment update

Options:

The options considered are as follows:

a) Invite the CEG to all committee meetings as well as inviting them to attend all Public Board meetings and making a quarterly report to the Board. This is a commitment (based on the current committee meeting arrangements) of around 9-12 hours per month, all within usual office hours. Although this would provide an element of public voice throughout the organisation, it would mean CEG member attendance at meetings where they do not have a relationship with staff or any direct experience these areas, which may could result in a poor experience of attending and potentially poor understanding of the subject matter. The level of commitment is high, given that we are currently reliant on a small group of able volunteers, some of whom work full-time. There is a risk based on the current profile of the CEG that they would not be able to fulfil a commitment to attend all committees, which would lead to inconsistency and difficulty in understanding the work and subsequent decision making of some of the committees. This option is not recommended.

b) (Recommended) Invite the CEG to the committee meetings most relevant to patient experience as well as inviting them to attend all Public Board meetings and making a quarterly report to the Board. The CEG will collate and complete the report template and will include the issues and patient feedback that they feel are pertinent. The CEG already attend Patient Safety and Experience Group (PSEG), which feeds into the Compliance and Risk Group (CRG), that feeds into Quality Governance Committee (QGC)/People Committee, as required. It is proposed that they continue to attend this and, with support from the Patient Experience team, a CEG representative attends QGC/People Committee twice yearly to provide input on patient and public experience. This option would be with a view to increasing the number of committees that the CEG attend as the number and skills of the group increase (subject to review and agreement by the Board and committee chairs).

c) (Recommended) Increase support to Committees by utilising the patient safety partners (who already provide a patient and public voice to the Trust in some meetings and reviews relating to patient safety under the PSIRF framework and have an understanding of current patient safety issues and trends), to expand the pool of available patient and public representatives. It is suggested that the patient safety partners would be used to attend meetings which are more patient safety focused, where their additional knowledge would be of benefit.

This would include Compliance and Risk Group and Performance/Audit Committee, as required. The Head of Patient Safety would support the patient safety partners to do this and the timeframe similar to QGC/People Committee (twice yearly).

d) Do not invite the CEG to attend or participate in any additional committees and focus on the agreed Board attendance. This is not recommended as the time at Board is limited and does not always allow for detailed discussion which may limit the patient representative understanding of the issues and constrain their input.

Summary:

The Community Engagement Group (CEG) supports the Trust in carrying out engagement events with the public and representing patient and public voice within the Trust.

In order to increase the influence of patient and public voice throughout the Trust, is it is proposed that a number of committee meetings and other relevant meetings are attended by both the CEG and the patient safety partners (who fulfil a similar patient representative role for patient safety as part of the PSIRF framework) who can provide this perspective. This will feed into their attendance at and reporting to the Board.

If supported, this will run for the committee cycle for 2025 and a review will be undertaken in January 2026 to determine the success of the CEG support to the Trust Board and Committee function.