Society, Health and Development

Peter Pattenden, Head of Adult Services, Health and Social Directorate
Fiona Clarke, Director of Corporate Performance and Standards
Angela White, Chief Executive, Sefton Council for Voluntary Services

Narrator: User involvement in representation is a shared priority across the agencies involved in the Society, Health and Development sector. Service providers also have a legal obligation to carry out consultation as part of the person-centred approach.

Peter Pattenden, Head of Adult Services, Health and Social Directorate: Six months ago my role changed because of some Government legislation called 'transforming social care' where we need to move the services that we currently provide into providing them in different ways so that you put the citizen at the heart of the issue and if, in fact, transferring choice and control to the individual.

Narrator: Consulting with service users helps with future planning, setting priorities and estimating the future amounts of support.

Fiona Clarke, Director of Corporate Performance and Standards: We just have been going through the whole processes as most Primary Care Trusts have done in the country, in terms of England. Where we've been developing what we call our Strategic Commissioning Plan. The way that we develop that is through something called the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment. What that means is that we actually been out with our colleagues in social care through the local authority. Actually asking our local residents what they think their priorities for health and well being should be. The areas we prioritized are obesity, reduction in smoking, cardiovascular disease, that is, things like strokes and heart attacks. Also looking at mental health and well being, and also alcohol, reducing the amount of alcohol consumption.

Narrator: Effective consultation means involving the whole community, including the hard to reach groups. This can be achieved through partnership with local agencies such as the voluntary sector or by increasing the ways that service users can make contact.

Angela White, Chief Executive, Sefton Council for Voluntary Services: You can e-mail those who have access to technology, there's the opportunity to browse our website to use our internet facilities and use that as a way of communication with us. We also use the voluntary sector, the Sefton Equalities Partnership, the local authority's citizen's panels We use any mechanism we can to provide the services that are best suited for our population.

Angela White, Chief Executive, Sefton Council for Voluntary Services: We got specialist workers that know how to engage with communities that haven't traditionally engaged, and we will do that through focus groups, through community development projects, through volunteering initiatives, and they are very much at the heart of our work. The Equalities Partnership that we are working together is a multi agency initiative that started partly due to our links with those people who are traditionally not engaged. Most groups I'm talking about might be people with disabilities, people who are from transgendered communities, lesbian and gay communities, black and racial minority communities. So that has been our role to actually bring these people to the table to participate more fully in the life of the borough.

END