Background
In partnership with the Democratic Society and Engage Britain, Involve designed and delivered phase two of the Health and Care project: the People’s Panel. The People’s Panel is part of a larger project run by Engage Britain – an independent charity bringing people together to tackle our country’s biggest challenges. Many people agree health and care is the number one issue facing the country today, so Engage Britain has launched a national drive to find out how we can make sure people across Britain get the health and care they need, when they need it. This larger project has four key stages:
- Stage 1 - Members of the public, frontline staff, and health and care users come together to share views and ideas with each other through Community Conversations. 100 Community Conversations have taken place between January - May 2021.
- Stage 2 - Over 100 people demographically representative people from across Britain come together as the People’s Panel to share their views, listen to what has come out of the Community Conversations and hear from experts in health and care. Panel Members will work together to explore the challenges and trade offs and come up with a first blueprint for the future of health and care.
- Stage 3 - Experts by experience, practice, and policy professionals will work together in a co-design process to turn the blueprint from the People’s Panel into practical plans for change.
- Stage 4 - The plans produced in stage three will be tested out with the general public, people who work on the frontline and politicians with influence over health and care decisions. These plans will be improved and re-tested to make sure everyone can get behind them.
For more information about this four step approach to change, please click here.
How the process worked
In 2021, 100 people from across England, Scotland, and Wales came together online to form the People’s Panel on Health and Care. Across four weekends between September - November, Panel members worked together to explore how we can ensure everyone in Britain gets the health and care they need. Panel Members also met in-between weekends for short ‘Micro Group’ sessions where they had the opportunity to think, reflect, and build rapport with other Panel Members. During the weekend sessions, members:
- Heared the stories, views, and ideas that people shared in the Community Conversations, and shared their own
- Heared from speakers - including patients, carers, people living in care, health and care experts, and NHS staff
- Discussed issues with other Panel members and weighed up what matters to people
- Decided what next steps should be taken to solve health and care challenges
To hear from the Panel Members about their experience of taking part in the process, please see the video below.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcseRIY0_os]
Impact
The priorities that came out of the People’s Panel will be taken into stage three of the Health and Care project. In early 2022, Engage Britain will bring together frontline staff, patients, people who use care support, and those who decide how health and care services are run to use the priorities from the People’s Panel to design practical plans for change. These plans will be tested to make sure they will make a difference to people. Later in 2022 the People’s Panel will meet for a second time to make sure these practical plans for change stay true to the things that matter most to people across Britain. Engage Britain will then share these plans with politicians from all parties.
People's Panel Two
In 2022 Involve will be continuing to work alongside Demsoc and Engage Britain to design and deliver People's Panel Two. We are looking forward to continuing with this exciting project and will update this page shortly.
Involve’s role
Involve, in partnership with the Democratic Society, was commissioned to design and facilitate the People’s Panel, alongside supporting Panel Members to get online and fully participate in the process. You can find more information about our partners below.
Our Partners
Democratic Society
The Democratic Society (or Demsoc) work to build a democracy that works for the 21st Century, by supporting:
- People - participation in decisions affecting their lives
- Councils/Governments - who want to involve people in decision-making
- Spaces/Pleases/Systems/Processes - to make this happen
Involve and Demsoc have collaborated on a number of projects together, including: Innovation in Democracy Programme, Waltham Forest Citizens’ Assembly on Hate Crime, Citizens’ Assembly of Scotland & Scotland’s Climate Assembly. You can find more information about Demsoc on their website. www.demsoc.org
Engage Britain
Engage Britain is a new charity bringing people together to tackle Britain’s biggest challenges. They support people across communities to share their different knowledge and experiences so they can work out ideas that answer the country’s problems. You can find more information about Engage Britain on their website. www.engagebritain.org
We will keep updating this page as the project progresses. For more information about the project, please get in touch with Maddie at: [email protected]