RCPCH are leaders in embedding patient perspectives in everything we do. We can help you learn to listen to these important voices to improve your organisation and programmes. The RCPCH &Us consultancy programme helps health services effectively and meaningfully engage with patients, their families, communities and wider public. Through bespoke training, coaching and engagement packages, we support services for 0-25 year olds to develop and thrive.
Who are RCPCH &Us?
We are leaders in embedding patient perspectives in everything we do.
Our team includes children, young people, young adults and family experts-by-experience with staff who have backgrounds in lived experience, clinical expertise, health services, education, youth & community work.
We work with ages 0-25 years old directly, as well as with parents, carers, families, advocates and wider community members.
We can support you in engagement planning, age-appropriate projects, training or development programmes on topics from long term conditions, service evaluation and transition to adult care.
Why patient and public involvement (PPI)?
Children and young people should have the best health care possible. They are a quarter of the UK population and 100% of our future.
Under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, they have the right to influence decisions affecting their care and to be supported to be healthy, happy and well.
RCPCH &Us effectively and meaningfully engages with children, young people and young adults aged 0-25 to support these rights.
To support your statutory duty to involve people and communities in:
- the planning of services
- the development and consideration of proposals for changes which, if implemented, would have an impact on the manner or range of services, and
- decisions which, when implemented, would have such an impact.
What are the benefits of PPI?
- Improved health outcomes
- Value for money
- Better decision-making
- Increased health literacy
- Skills for life
- Increased self-esteem and confidence
- Improved quality
- Accountability and transparency
- Meeting legal duties
- Addressing health inequalities
How we can help
- Supporting public involvement legal duties within Working in Partnership with People and Communities (2022)
- Supporting your ICB annual reporting, where NHS commissioning organisations have a legal duty under section 14Z45 of the NHS Act 2006 to ‘make arrangements’ to secure that individuals to whom services are being or may be provided and their carers/representatives are involved when commissioning services for NHS patients
- Information, advice and guidance on patient and public engagement to support regulatory visits and inspections
- Providing insights to support Core20PLUS5 programmes to reduce health inequalities
- Increasing accessibility and inclusion of 0-25 year olds within health services engagement under the Health and Care Act 2022 Triple Aim Duty
Examples of our consultancy services
- Engagement with children, young people, young adults and families
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- Capturing insights, voices and views through a range of different consultation methods
- One off events, taster sessions, creative problem solving group activities
- Delivering ongoing engagement projects online, in person or as hybrid sessions
- Opportunities for children, young people and young adults to gain accreditations for their engagement
Check out our children, young people and family led projects on asthma, epilepsy, COVID-19 and hidden health experiences.
- Training for staff and volunteers
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A range of bespoke and ready to go training programmes that can be delivered in groups of 10-100 staff or volunteers, looking at the elements needed to work with people and communities within health services, settings and systems.
Training can be tailored to places, systems, boards, partnerships or offered to units and neighbourhoods as part of a quality improvement programme. Example topics that have been delivered in the past include:
- Effective Engagement - exploring practical tips and solutions for engaging with different community groups both online and in person
- Building a strategic engagement plan - supporting thinking in developing an engagement strategy or plan from understanding your community, to designing for impact and working through barriers to deliver successful engagement
- Engagement & Quality Improvement - bringing patient and public voice into quality improvement programmes, to support shared solutions to tricky problems in services
- Trauma informed engagement - providing insights and links to theory to help manage wellbeing through engagement activities
- Engagement as a data set - identifying different methods for data collection in engagement activities, understanding ethical consideration and legislation, reviewing different ways to represent engagement data
- Safer working practices for engagement work - using best practice from the sector to look at safeguarding, wellbeing, risk assessments, consent processes, data management and how to provide accessible and inclusive engagement activities
- Train the trainers for group work - developing skills, confidence and competence in working with groups of patients and the public in engagement programmes, from planning to delivery and evaluation of group work
- Recipes for Rights - we look at the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and articles that children and young people have told us are important to their healthcare and provide 'recipes' such as starter activities to break the ice, patient viewfinders for one-to-one work and and quality improvement activities
Click through to see examples of the impact of our training with Epilepsy and Diabetes units.
- Development for staff or volunteers
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- Access to our new Engagement Standards and Engagement Quality Assurance Programme
- Information, advice and guidance on engagement
- 1:1 or group coaching and mentoring
- Opportunities to shadow or access peer support when delivering your own engagement activities
Sign up to the Engagement Collaborative newsletter for workers or watch young people's tips for engagement.
Hear from our volunteers
To me, RCPCH &Us is a fantastic organisation which has given me opportunities to share my views and opinions and inspired me to participate in projects. I feel valued as an individual and as a volunteer
Listen to our fantastic volunteers' RCPCH &Us Podcasts, with episodes on engagement, climate change and living with health conditions.