What have we done to engage around bowel cancer?
What has been influenced as a result of this engagement?
Links to other docs
On Saturday 1 September 2018, the CCG made a change to its prescribing policy following a national consultation, which was supported locally in East Berkshire, and subsequent NHS England guidance.
In line with the change, GP surgeries across East Berkshire no longer routinely prescribe a range of over the counter (OTC) medicines, vitamins and minerals associated with short term conditions and minor ailments.
During June 2016 and June 2017, the NHS spent approximately £569 million on prescriptions for medicines which could have been purchased OTC from a pharmacy or other outlets such as supermarkets. Locally, over £3.7 million was spent between April 2017 and March 2018.
Engagement
During July 21 – October 21 2017, NHS England and NHSCC consulted with a range of prescriber and pharmacy representatives on items which should not be routinely prescribed in primary care. Feedback from the consultation showed that there was general support in place for the recommended change.
The recommendations were publicly consulted on for a period of 12 weeks from 20 December 2017 and 14 March 2018, attracting 2,849 responses, nationally.
The public consultation was supported locally mainly through the CCG’s website, community partnership forum, at which there was a debate and poll; patient group bulletins and via the GP bulletin. Unfortunately, we do not know how many of the 2,849 national responses received were from local people.
In addition, we provided an opportunity for local residents to ask any questions or to share any concerns with one of the CCG’s Lead Prescribing Support Pharmacist by hosting two on-line forums. Click here
Communication
To help us inform people and staff of the change in advance, we did the following:
Within just a month of the change being implemented, prescription data showed a reduction in spend of £18,000 on these items. Over the following three months (September – November 2018), there was a reduction in spend of £64,000 which is really encouraging as it shows the impact of the policy and its communication/engagement.
Additional links: EPPC Policy 5 Prescribing of medicines that are available to purchase for minor aliments
What have we done to engage with C&YP?
Between October 2017 and December 2018, East Berkshire Clinical Commissioning Group and Local Authorities in Bracknell Forest, Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead and Slough carried out a survey to understand whether the health and community services being offered to young people are easy for them to use. The survey, which the Slough Youth Parliament helped to promote, was aimed at 11–18-year-olds across East Berkshire. It generated 962 responses, of which 448 were from children and young people from Slough. Full details can be found here
As a follow-up to the Getting it Right survey, a number of focus groups were held with children and young people in collaboration with the youth-voices lead in each Local Authority, educational psychologists and the participation lead for Berkshire Healthcare. A total of 58 children and young people took part in the focus groups. Full details can be found here
The recent Make Your Mark ballot for 11–18-year-olds was one of the largest youth consultations of its kind in UK history. Across East Berkshire 16,474 young people took part in voting for the top issues of concern to be debated by the Youth Parliament in the House of Commons in November 2018. Nationally, mental health – specifically, ‘mental health services should be improved with young people’s help and should be available in schools’ – was voted as the second issue of concern. In Bracknell Forest, mental health was voted the top issue of concern, in Slough it was voted the second and in RBWM it was voted the fifth (out of ten issues).
To further develop our participation work with children and young people, NHS East Berkshire CCG has allocated funding to develop a Young Health Champions (YHC) programme, accredited by the Royal Society of Public Health. The programme has been launched in Slough, with a view to extending it across Bracknell Forest and RBWM. The project aims to:
Full details can be found here
Berkshire Healthcare have a full-time participation worker and are committed to the active involvement of children, young people and their parents/carers in making decisions about changes to CYP and family services, including specialist CAMHS. This is not just about consultation, but genuinely involving young people and their families in the decision-making process, highlighting their experience, and giving them feedback on how their contribution has made a difference. Further information can be found here
In 2018 Berkshire Healthcare Foundation Trust collected feedback and views from young service users and their families through questionnaires, regular steering groups and specific consultations.
Full details can be found here
What has been influenced as a result of this engagement?
Links to other docs
A project aimed at increasing awareness, prevention and self-management of diabetes in Slough, which has the highest prevalence of diabetes in the South East, is going from strength to strength.
As part of the project, which is commissioned by the CCG and delivered by Diabetes UK, six diabetes champions were initially recruited from different sections of the community in Slough. However, the number of champions who have since been trained has doubled and through their commitment and work, they continue to improve the health and well-being of others locally.
The role of a community champion is to help educate and raise awareness of diabetes and Diabetes UK by organising local events as well as delivering presentations and talks. They are able to explain what Type 2 diabetes is, who is at risk, signs and symptoms, myths and misconceptions, complications, and the NHS services that are available to people locally. Champions inspire others to help reduce their risk of diabetes, or to manage their diabetes better.
During the first six months of the project going live (March – October 2018), the diabetes community champions programme achieved the following:
22 engagement events have been conducted to promote awareness of prevention and better self-management of diabetes.
The CCG launched its ‘Children and Adult End of Life Care Strategy 2018-2011 in July which aims to provide better support to people who are in the last months or years of their life, enabling them to live as well as possible until they die.
The strategy also seeks to provide support to individuals’ families and carers, doctors and nurses, social care staff and all voluntary services involved in end of life care.
The launch of the three-year strategy followed a comprehensive review of existing services as well as local engagement with residents and healthcare professionals, both of which informed the strategy which contains five key strategic priorities.
Working with its End of Life Patient Panel(agenda, notes) which comprises of local people, some facing their own end of life issues, or with lived experience of caring for others at the end of life, the CCG co-produced a vision for End of Life care for the people of East Berkshire:
“We want every person who is dying to be seen as an individual with life yet to live. We want co-ordinated end of life care to support these individuals, their carers and families with compassion, dignity and respect’.
Commissioners also gained invaluable feedback from patient panel meetings as well as other forums such as an End of Life Community Event on 21st August (agenda) and 5th September 2018 (agenda and feedback).
A number of surveys were also carried out targeting local GPs ; individual’s relatives and friends as well as the Out of Hours Service providers. Although only a handful of people replied to these surveys, the opportunity was provided and effectively advertised.
The conference was a platform for a range of speakers; many of whom are practitioners and survivors, who brought together their expertise, knowledge and experiences to provide the attendees with a deeper understanding of the challenges in responding to the difficult issues that affect people, not only in East Berkshire, but across the country.
Highlights
What has been influenced as a result of this engagement?
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Out of hospital urgent care:
In East Berkshire we have the opportunity to redesign the way urgent care services are delivered with the input from local people.
The CCG held a ‘Big Conversation’ about urgent care services from 21 May – 6 August 2018. The purpose of this conversation was to understand from local people their experiences of urgent care and what matters to them when they have an urgent care need.
The ‘Big Conversation’ ran over two phases:
Phase 1 was a targeted engagement approach, recognising that some groups in the population make more us of urgent care services than the rest of the population. Using analytics we were able to define the groups who use urgent care services more than average. It was therefore particularly important to hear their views.
Anyone may need to use urgent care services and therefore we needed to speak to our wider population as well and take their experiences in to account.
Phase 2 was designed to test out with local people some of the things we heard from the first phase and to reach a wider audience and we did this via a survey.
Highlights:
Phase 1 (21 May -19 July):
Total number of people we spoke to was 406
Phase 2 ran from 10 July – 6 August:
What have we done with what we have heard?
For full details on the ‘Big Conversation’, where we are now and our next steps, please visit the dedicated website page Transforming Urgent Care Services.
World Tuberculosis (TB) Day 2018
TB is a key priority for Slough, there were 207 cases of TB among Slough residents between 2013 and 2015, giving an incidence rate of 47.8 per 100,000 population, which is significantly higher than the national average of 12 per 100,000 population (Slough Health Profile 2017).
Highlights
What has been influenced as a result of this engagement?
Links to other docs
