Public engagement strategy

Transcription

1 Public engagement strategy Our ambition Through this Public Engagement Strategy we want to achieve a more targeted, responsive, and collaborative approach to public engagement which harnesses the power of people s voices throughout our regulatory work and empowers people to expect and choose good care. This is our ambition. We want the public to actively engage with us whether this is to use our expert, independent judgements about care quality to inform care decisions, to tell us their views and experiences or to help us do our job. We want the public to find it easy to interact with us and have a positive and consistent experience when they do. We want the public to understand the impact of their contribution and how it helps us to deliver our common goal to drive improvements to health and social care. We also want to make best use of our resources and to deliver better value for money, whilst supporting our own staff to do good public engagement. 2. What we know Engaging the public throughout our work is central to ensuring CQC is a strong, independent regulator that always acts on the side of people who use services, their families and carers. It involves working with people who use services to: raise awareness of CQC s work listen to and act on their views and experiences of care provide information which best meets their needs improve the way we do our job. This work improves our understanding of the quality of care people are receiving, empowers people to understand the quality of care they should expect, ensures CQC improves as an organisation and helps build public trust and confidence in our work. The ambition of this strategy requires CQC to undertake certain activities to engage the public. We must deliver a greater focus on continuous public engagement to: hear people s views and experiences of care in an ongoing way rather than just as part of an inspection build more effective partnerships with organisations that represent or act on behalf of people who use services 1

2 To continue to improve the relationship CQC has with the public we must: analyse experiences of care in a more sophisticated way so the public can be assured we make the best use of their information get better at telling the public how we have used their experiences to improve care, or their feedback to drive changes in how we do our job publish information about the quality of care that meets the public s needs. In order to do this well, we ll need to use public insight more effectively to improve how we approach organisational change and respond to the changing market whether that s changes to how care is delivered, or how the public interact and make transactions. Throughout this strategy, we use the term public to describe a lot of people. We know the public are not a homogenous group they are diverse and have multiple needs. Over the life span of this strategy, these multiple needs will change and the tools which people use to engage will develop. This means need to be innovative and flexible in our approach. We ll need to take advantage of new digital technology and trial use of new channels for engagement, which we constantly evaluate to check how effective they are and the return on investment. 3. Our priorities We will focus on four priorities to deliver our ambition: Encourage improvement, innovation and sustainability in care Work in partnership with organisations that represent people who use services to strengthen our collective voices and influence improvements to care Deliver an intelligence-driven approach to regulation Continuously encourage and enable the voices of people who use services, their families and carers to drive our understanding of the quality of care, making better use of their information and improving our reporting on the action we take in response Promote a single shared view of quality Provide and promote public information which, on a 24/7 basis, helps people to understand what good care looks like, and to facilitate their decisions and choices Improve our efficiency and effectiveness Develop and improve the way we do our job through public participation and use of insight, embedding an innovative and streamlined approach to public engagement which delivers 2

3 value for money. As we work towards achieving our ambition we will address the risks and opportunities for equality and human rights as outlined in our Equality and human rights impact analysis. We will continue to: retain a regulatory model which scrutinises how well providers engage with people who use their services and their representatives and use the outputs of that engagement to drive improvements to the quality of care they provide invest in engaging people from seldom heard communities, using an appropriate mix of methods to meet people s individual needs including our Experts by Experience programme raise awareness of our role and purpose through an always-on campaign approach through a variety of channels including national and local media, social media, providers and VCSE orgs, with spikes of activity delivered through the year targeting particular population groups. invest in improving the customer experience people have with us, ensuring consistency and ease of access work with people who use services, their families and carers and organisations that represent them in the development and delivery of our work. What we must do differently We will: Understand who the public are, what they need from us and how we can reach them effectively this includes understanding how this changes over time as new technologies develop and the way people interact with services evolves increase our focus on partnership working with national and local organisations that represent, or act on behalf of, people who use services, including sharing our evidence to amplify our collective voices and impact. improve our website by establishing a clear purpose for it, ensuring the content we publish online is built around the needs of our users and using the work to deliver an organisational taxonomy to change the way people can find information about services. 3

4 invest time and resources in understanding how we can best use people s views and experiences of care to support becoming a more intelligence led regulator. support our staff, including inspection teams, so they can play a more active role in engaging the public, including through greater use of digital engagement methods. deliver a continuous, targeted, cross-sector public engagement, including with groups such as Healthwatch, as part of local and regional relationship management work to inform inspection planning. embed a public focused culture across CQC, clarifying accountability for delivery of this strategy, and supporting our staff with the skills, guidance and tools to deliver. 4. How we will know when we ve achieved our ambition? In delivering this strategy, we expect the following outcomes: Short term People know about our information People know who we are and how and when to contact us People have more opportunity to participate in CQC policy-making CQC works collaboratively with organisations that represent people who use services Providers know CQC reviews how well they engage with people who use their services to drive improvements as part of our regulatory model Medium term People use our information People have a positive and consistent experience when they engage with us People have more influence over the policies that CQC adopts Organisations that represent people who use services support and promote CQC activity People know providers should engage with them to improve their services CQC understand the value of different sources of people s experiences of care as risk / quality indicator and is able to generate better insight from this intelligence. Long term People trust our information People know what we have done with their information (including experiences of care) 4

5 The views of people who use services help to drive CQC policy change Partnerships work at all levels, including local collaboration and information sharing Providers engage with people who use their services to drive improvements We are better able to target and make the best use of our resources. We expect these outcomes to lead to the following impacts: 1. People understand what good care looks like / to expect from good services. 2. People make informed choices about their care or that of their loved ones. 3. More services providing good or outstanding care. 4. Care Providers use the views of their clients and patients to improve care and include them in decisions about their care and in policy-making. 5

6 Objective 1: Work in partnership with organisations that represent people who use services to strengthen our collective voices and influence improvements to care 5.1. What we know Greater partnership working with organisations that represent people who use services offers CQC huge opportunity to have increased impact in driving improvements to the quality of care people receive and at the same time more effectively use our own resources. To be a credible and effective regulator, CQC must have a strong, trusting relationship with people who use services. We know that health and social care charities including for example the Richmond Group of Charities, have strong, trusted relationships with people using services, their families and carers. We are fortunate that there is a strong appetite amongst organisations that work with and represent people who use services at both national and local level for working in closer partnership with CQC to strengthen the voices of people who use services. The best partnerships are built on trust and reciprocity. Engagement by inspection teams with local and regional public groups, including Healthwatch builds relationships which encourage intelligence sharing but a more targeted approach is needed to make best use of resources and a feedback loop is required to build confidence in CQC responsiveness. At both national and local level, we know that better information, driven by user s needs and better advance information and data sharing will help organisations that represent the public help CQC to promote our inspection reports, ratings and publications and call for improvements to care where required What we want to achieve By 2021 organisations that work with and represent people who use services at local and national level will tell us they feel they have mutually beneficial partnership with CQC, based on reciprocal trust and respect. This means organisations that represent people who use services at national and local level: feel fully informed about CQC s work and understand how the information they share with CQC is used use CQC information and published findings as evidence when calling for improvements to care. feel that we are collectively focused on complementary activity that drives improvements to the quality of care people receive. 6

7 At both national and local level we spend more time working more closely with organisations that represent or act on behalf of the public. Through this we will better understand and be able to respond to changes in care quality, share information We will be better at sharing our published findings on care quality with organisations that represent or act on behalf of the public to increase the impact of our inspection reports and our respective programmes of work on improvements to care. We will work more closely with Healthwatch to align our public engagement plans, decrease duplication, increase the impact of our inspection reports, and improve our access to people s experiences of care We will drive up use of our reports and ratings to support people s decisions about care services through partnerships with organisations that represent people who use services How we will do it Deliver a programme of national-level engagement with organisations that represent people who use services, or work on their behalf, including regular briefings, and advance information-sharing and proactive planned stakeholder management and support for senior staff to sustain constructive relationships. Develop a cross-sector regional approach to public engagement led by inspection teams. This will include Healthwatch, overview and scrutiny committees, PPGs, PALs, NHS complaints advocacy services and key local voluntary and community sector organisations. Encourage and enable organisations that represent people who use services to access published CQC data sets and reports so they can use them in their unique but complementary roles to drive improvements in care Establish mechanisms to record and monitor the quality of national and local relationships with organisations that represent people who use services and report back on sentiment. 7

8 Objective 2: Continuously encourage and enable the voices of people who use services, their families and carers to drive our understanding of the quality of care, making better use of their information and improving our reporting on the action we take in response 6.1. What we know We know that health and social care services that have a strong focus on public engagement provide higher quality care. CQC can play a powerful role in encouraging providers of health and social care services to improve how they engage the public by monitoring and assessing how well they find out, listen to and act on the views of people who use their service. To deliver an intelligence-driven approach to regulation it is critical that CQC has timely, continuous access to people s experiences of care. However, we also know there are challenges in accessing people s experiences of care in a continuous, timely way: People who use services are asked to feedback about their experiences to a variety of health and social system partners and care providers through a variety of mechanisms, including formal complaints processes and Healthwatch. They also share information either voluntarily or on request with voluntary and community organisations with whom they may be in contact, and people are talking about care experiences informally and publicly, through their online social networks. The sharing of this information across organisations is not consistent or comprehensive. The assumption is that there is a duplication of effort and resources to obtain this information. The health and social care system is complex and many people are not aware of, or do not understand the role of, the different organisations involved, including that of CQC; nor do they understand which organisation can best meet their individual needs. We know that people want to share their experiences of care with us for different reasons, including: o To achieve a specific outcome (e.g. to improve their care or reward a good service) o For the greater good (e.g. to ensure the same poor care doesn t happen to others) o To address an injustice (e.g. to seek action against a provider). o We also know there are some key barriers to people telling us about their care. These include: a lack of awareness of CQC or our role the fear of negative repercussions for the person receiving care the lack of feedback about what we do with the information 8

9 issues with the online form we use to capture this information. When people do contact CQC to share their views and experiences of care, CQC listens and responds to the information. However, the quality of their interaction with us often does not reflect the value we place on the information they have shared and we do not take the time to let them know how that information will be used so our response is invisible to them. The same is true for groups and organisations that represent people who use services who share information about people s experiences of care, such as Healthwatch. Time and investment is needed in building relationships and trust with people from seldom heard communities and those made vulnerable by their circumstances to encourage them to share their views and experiences of care. CQC s online feedback form should be more user friendly particularly for those accessing it via mobile devices People who use services often want to share their experiences of moving between care services involving multiple providers, not just of a single provider and CQC and other system partners face challenges in amending their systems and processes to support this We also know that the involvement of people who use health and social care services or care for those who do known as Experts by Experience in our inspection teams has helped to ensure our judgements and ratings of services are built on a meaningful understanding of what care is like for people using the service. We know there is an opportunity to explore how Experts by Experience could help CQC have timely, continuous access to people s experiences of care What we want to achieve: By 2021, we want people to know what CQC s role and purpose is, to understand how CQC uses experiences of care to improve care quality and to have a good experience when they do. We want people and organisations that represent people to understand how CQC has used their experiences of care to effectively regulate services and drive improvements to care By 2021 we will understand the value of different sources of people s self-reported experiences of care as an indicator of care quality deterioration or improvement across the different services we regulate. We will know how much qualitative information on people s experiences of care we need to effectively regulate services and we will be able to generate better insight from this intelligence. We will access this in the most efficient ways By 2021 engagement between service providers and people who use services to continually understand care experiences and use these to drive improvement will be strengthened, and we will be able to see our influence on this change. 9

10 6.3. How we will do it We will: Through our regulatory model we will encourage providers of care services to be more proactive in listening to and acting on the views and experiences of care of people who use services. make better use of new technology to access and analyse qualitative information about people s experiences of care in more sophisticated ways to better identify risk and target resources, and understand the relative value of different sources of information on people s experiences of care. This includes understanding the value of qualitative intelligence CQC does not currently routinely access and analyse, for example complaints information held by providers. continue to improve the customer service people receive when they contact us to share their experiences of care and upgrade our internal processes to enable us to feedback on the action we have taken support our registration and inspection teams to deliver continuous, targeted, cross-sector, proactive and reactive public engagement, including with groups such as the Healthwatch network, as part of their local and regional relationship management work to inform ongoing monitoring of services. work in partnership with national and local voluntary and community organisations and Members of Parliament enabling them to identify and share information about the quality of care from people who use services with whom they are in contact continue to make use of awareness-raising campaigns, national and local news media, speeches and exhibitions to target and reach different population groups to increase public awareness and understanding of CQC and encourage people to tell us about their care. make greater use of digital engagement methods to widen our reach and enable people who use services to tell us about their experiences of care. adopt a different approach to future ExE contracts, engaging with people who use services, CQC colleagues and the broader market to ensure new contracts support all parts of our operating model. 10

11 Objective 3: Provide and promote public information which helps people understand what good care looks like and make informed decisions about services What we know We know the main reasons the public come to us for information are to understand: The quality of the care services they or their loved ones use or plan to use What standards they can expect from these services How to comment on or complain about services. These three areas make up a majority of the visits to the website and calls and s to our contact centre from the public. Quality of care services The public use our information about the quality of care (i.e. our ratings and reports) most when they consider themselves to have a choice of services. This perception of choice is greatest for social care and so this is where our information can currently have the most benefit. This finding has come through from our own user research and research we ve commissioned. It s supported by website analytics, which show that 70 per cent of people searching for services are looking for care homes or home care agencies. The public find some of the information in our inspection reports useful but have to search for this amongst a lot of less helpful content. We also know that, for some types of services, they find reports difficult to find or understand. The way the public describe and search for the services they use is not the same as the labels we use when we register or inspect them. This can make it harder for people to find inspection reports related to the providers of their care or to compare different services. For example, people searching for care home reports tend to have positive experiences as the information we hold fairly closely mirrors how they think about the home. Where the providers and locations we register and report against don t resemble people s expectations such as in mental health and community health services they are far more likely to be unable to find the information they need. In order to help people find the information they need, we need to use a public friendly categorisation of care services across all our data systems. This will help us improve the search on our website. Standards to expect 11

12 Our information about the standards we all have the right to expect from care services is popular with and useful to the public. Two out of every three people reading about what they can expect from their services on our website are looking at care home or home care information What we want to achieve By 2021, all of our published information and services for the public will be designed around their needs. For our public website, this means: Simple, clear and concise pages for the public based around the common tasks and information needs people have when they visit our site. This includes information about individual care services and the results of their inspections. Improvements to the way you can search for and compare care services and to the way we display inspection and monitoring information. An improved way for people to tell us about their experiences of care online. This will be simpler for the user, it will capture the information we need to take appropriate action and will work on all devices. It will also help us feedback to people about the action we ve taken. By 2021, we want the information we send to people who have subscribed to our updates to have improved, such as our: public newsletter mass s about new publications inspection alerts. We also want to have developed further our suite of public leaflets and provide information in alternative formats to ensure it s accessible to all. In relation to inspection reports and the information we publish alongside these, by 2021 we will have helped people use these to make informed decisions about care services. This will need to align with the work to support inspectors to do their job efficiently and effectively. 7.3 How we ll do it We ll agree a clear proposition for the public website and a more rigorous process for deciding what information we publish on it, based around the needs of our users. This includes information we publish about individual services (that is, within and alongside our inspection reports) as well as our general advice and guidance. 12

13 We ll review the information on our website and use data and testing with our users to ensure it meets their needs. We ll continue to work with providers and stakeholders to extend the reach of our leaflets and other public information. When we produce key pieces of public information, we ll design and test them using the views of people using services and their representatives. This will include working with other organisations to make the way we explain common subjects such as complaints more consistent We ll continue to evaluate our information after it is published to help us improve. We ll base our work on public digital services on the results of user research and follow the process set out by the Government Digital Service. The first part of this work will be the improved online form for people to share their experiences of care with us. We have completed the discovery (in-depth user research) on this project and the design and testing will start in summer Our focus on building effective and efficient digital services will not prevent people who are unable or unwilling to use these from accessing them. We will adopt an assisted digital approach for these people so they can achieve the same outcomes offline as others can online. This means, for example, ensuring people s experiences of care are used in the same way whether they submit them through the website, over the phone or through printed forms. We ll support the development of a consistent taxonomy across the organisation which makes sense to the public and supports them to find information about services more easily. Once this work is complete, we ll take advantage of it (along with the improvements to registration) to enable people to search for the services they use or need in more effective ways. In order to improve how easily people can understand and use our inspection reports, we ll promote use of simple, concise and plain English approach to 13

14 writing. We ll also use the views of the public and their representatives whenever we update the templates for our inspection reports. All these changes will need support from across the organisation and we ll deliver them in line with the priorities and plans of our digital, policy, registration, intelligence and customer service colleagues. 14

15 Objective 4: Develop and improve the way we do our job through public participation and insight 8.1. What we know The public, people who use services and organisations that represent them are integral to improving the way we do our job. Engaging them in the development of our work provides insight into how our plans will work in practice, consequently improving all parts of our operating model and how we deliver our role and purpose. We know that: People tell us that our customer service and online communications have started to improve. People tell us they have more trust and confidence in CQC s decision making. The range of people with protected characteristics, from seldom heard groups and partner organisations who participate in our work has increased. However, we know that our current engagement structures are sector-based, i.e. healthcare, social care and mental health rather than topic-based, which means that organisations representing people who use services are asked to interact with us many times on similar matters. We could be better at gathering public insight about our impact, performance and sentiment and reporting this back to drive organisational change. The processing of public payments and expenses can take a long time and is complexed, which ultimately can decrease engagement rates. Other organisations in the health and social care system work hard to engage the public in the development of their work and that there may be duplication of effort in establishing multiple structures or on common areas of interest What we want to achieve By 2021, we want the public, and organisations that represent them, to want to actively engage with us. We want the public to be involved in early stages of developing ideas which leads to a decreased need to invest heavily in formal consultation processes because public views will be embedded in the policy development process. CQC will be able demonstrate the impact of this. We want the public to have a good customer experience when engaging with us and to tell their family, friends, colleagues and partners that we are easy to work with, responsive and trustworthy. We want the public to understand the impact of their participation and how it helps us to deliver our common goal to drive improvements to care. 15

16 8.3. How we will do it When we develop new strategies, policies and methods, we will: Collaborate and partner with the public, people who use services and organisations that represent them throughout the development process, from coproduction of ideas through to formal consultation to ensure that public concerns and aspirations are consistently understood and considered. Embed the role of public voice in decision making for all parts of CQC s Operation Model, including the Monitor function, establishing new processes to ensure consistency and enable us to feedback on how we have listened to people s views. Embedding a new Public payments policy and process for the organisation so that it is clear to our staff what support can be offered, and to the public what people are entitled to and when they can receive this. Embedding an expression of interest process for all participation opportunities which is fair, transparent and ensures both sides are clear on expectations. Invest time and expertise in setting out clearly, and in plain English, what our proposals mean for the public and people using services. Mine and exploit existing insights to avoid duplication. Make greater use of digital channels and new technology to crowdsource public opinion and hear new voices. Invest in relationships with organisations in the health and social care system - particularly other Arm s length bodies to share feedback and engagement channels to reduce duplication. This includes working together to deliver coproduction and consultation activity. Tell people who have participated in our work how their feedback has been used and the change it has led to We will ensure the organisation has insight to inform its continuous improvement by: Understanding who the public are, what they need from us and how we can reach them this includes understanding how this changes over time. 16

17 Embedding new systems to better understand who is contacting us and why via our National Customer Services Centre and online and using this customer insight to influence improvements across our Operating Model. Developing the role of Experts by Experience to ensure their collective insight is continually informing CQC s continuous improvement. Collating insight from a variety of sources about our impact, performance and sentiment and report this back to drive organisational change. 9. We will embed an innovative approach to public engagement which delivers value for money Throughout all of our objectives, we have embedded this approach. In addition we will: Trial and use new channels for engagement, which we constantly evaluate to check how effective they are and the return on investment. Develop new and existing technology to engage the public for example, by developing our public online community to crowdsource opinion. Support our people with the training they need to work effectively and efficiently for example in use of online engagement channels, facilitation or qualitative analysis. Report internally and publically on progress to demonstrate the value and impact of our work. 17