North Central London Strategic Health Authority (NCLSHA) – Development of lay involvement arrangements for services for young people, pregnant women and newborn babies

Client challenge

The Healthy Start, Healthy Futures consultation was launched in 2003, as part of a commitment to improve local services for young people, pregnant women and newborn babies. Article 13 was commissioned to develop ‘lay’ involvement arrangements as part of the process to prepare for the formal Healthy Start consultation on health services in North Central London. Having identified key stakeholder groups ahead of formal consultation, the client wanted to ensure that all stakeholder groups had been accounted for. Beyond stakeholder mapping, the client required expert advice on reaching and involving stakeholders – lay people – for the formal consultation.

What did we do?

Article 13 started this ‘research’ with a participative ‘chart meeting’ held at NCLSHA, to which all Primary Care Trust’s in the sector were invited. The meeting was run with representatives from Enfield, Islington (two boroughs of the NCLSHA sector) and NCLSHA staff. The output of this meeting was a master grid of identified stakeholders and historic communications with these groups. There were however significant gaps. To address this issue, census 2001 data and the North Central London borough websites were researched to produce a socio-economic profile by area within the sector. Areas of local concentration of particular groups were highlighted, for example significant clusters or communities of particular religions or nationalities.

After this, an independent source identifying voluntary groups, children’s issues and diseases was used as the basis for further analysis to identify issues and which organisations might represent those issues. The analysis identified children in need, such as children in care and children at risk, such as child asylum seekers. The results of all these analyses were mapped against each other to see where potential lay user representation already existed and where there were lay representatives missing. It was then possible to contact the organisations who represented those ‘missing groups’ to secure their attendance at the first lay representative consultation meeting of Healthy Start Healthy Future. Article 13 also supported three public meetings linking interested self-nominated lay representatives, and ensuring that they could take part on an equal basis.

How did we break the cycle?

In identifying missing stakeholders, and developing involvement arrangements for these people and others, Article 13 were able to ensure that the clients’ consultation process was rigorous and stood up to external scrutiny, thus providing governance and transparency for the consultation outcomes.

© Article 13 2005