Sitting on the train to Birmingham and reflecting on the many impactful and insightful conversations we've had today. Leaving feeling even more committed to shifting the systems attitude to involving and working in partnership with people and communities #EngagementPractitioners
Thread:
This is hard. There's no two ways about it, we're under pressure and we're all feeling it. We need to look after ourselves and make sure our team members have permission to look after themselves.These are my top ten tips (feel free to add) that I've shared with my team:
1.It’s OK to not have your camera on for every meeting. It’s OK to have a phone call rather than a Teams meeting!
2.Walk about, if you can, get out of the house and go for a walk. Put some time in your diary for a break and go for a walk without your phone!
3.Walking meetings – these are a thing! You can go for a walk and join a call.
4.Set time aside in your diary to not have meetings and give yourself some headspace to think.
5.Turn your laptop off when you’ve finished work for the day (your laptop performance will improve)
I'm invigorated after today's @NHSCitizen meeting. Be warned this is a long thread! @NHSCitizen Advisory Group's ambition is to draw together all of the forums and networks that @NHSEngland work with to share experiences, identify areas of shared interest (and frustration), 1/7
to amplify the voice and experience of people with lived experience and to drive change in how we @NHSEngland involve people and communities in meaningful and impactful ways. We have many forums and networks that do brilliant work in their own area and the Advisory Group 2/7
aims to bring that work in to a shared space to learn, connect and amplify peoples experiences across different communities of place, health, geography and identifies. It's a new work in progress that, especially after today's meeting, I know will have enormous benefit 3/7
#InternationalWomenDay2020 I celebrate and thank the incredible women who live their values, embrace their uniqueness and celebrate others ... It's a long list because there are so many brilliant women striving to achieve equality and challenge inequity #WeRiseTogether
Thread warning!
I've observed many welcoming the news that the NHS will be able to deny services to patients who abuse staff.
Whilst on one level I welcome this, no one deserves to be abused whilst working especially when they are providing care. 1/4
On another level it concerns me that there's been no mention of how abuse is defined. The value based personal judgment about what is abuse is hard. To one person they are being assertive, to another it's aggression. People may be frustrated because they can't get answers 2/4
Some people may be struggling to communicate or be understood e.g. Autistic people are often misunderstood as the level of training staff receive is woeful. Bereaved families seeking answers meet with a wall of silence. 3/4
Thread: The attitude of 'just get X to do your engagement for you' is at the heart of why #NHS organisations often don't involve people and communities in meaningful ways that shift power and put people and communities in control. 1/7
Of course partnerships are critical. Often it's the #VCSE sector who have the trustees relationships, especially with people who are marginalised and excluded by society. But outsourcing your engagement also fails to achieve the coproduction and cocreation of services 2/7
And, more importantly, the cocreation of health and wellbeing. We have to support #NHS staff, clinicians and people to find ways of working together rather than perpetuate the patriarchal and paternalist medical model of treating illness. 3/7