Thank you to everyone who fed back their views, comments and ideas during the 10-week engagement period on the NCL Start Well Case for Change for maternity, neonatal, and children and young people services.
The Start Well Case for Change set out how hospital-based services in NCL work now and highlighted some opportunities for the future. It did not propose specific changes or solutions at this stage of the programme.
Through the engagement, we wanted to understand if the opportunities identified through work with staff and patients resonated more widely and to check if any important areas had been missed or required further exploration.
What you told us
Alongside a survey, 43 engagement activities took place across NCL including briefings and meetings, patient focus groups, and engagement sessions at outpatient and antenatal clinics, community centres and play sessions. We reached 518 patients and residents in total – including 207 in-depth conversations – and 389 people answered at least one of the survey questions.
The feedback shared was extremely valuable and an engagement report, with a full analysis, is available to read on the NCL health and care website. Headline findings include that a majority of survey respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the opportunities in the Case for Change to improve maternity and neonatal services (79%) and children and young people services (77%).
Through the wider engagement, the following were identified as important:
- Maternity care: safe and compassionate care, and good communications
- Neonatal care: the best possible services delivered by specialists, and good communications
- Emergency care for children and young people: care close to home, being seen quickly, and having good communications
- Planned care for children and young people: having the best care even if it is further from home, and good communications.
There was rich qualitative feedback, including some detailed observations from parents with learning disabilities, parents of children and young people with Sickle Cell disease and further feedback from staff. These are set out in the engagement report and the programme is considering how best to provide these areas with focus and take forward. Alongside the engagement, over the summer clinicians from across NCL engaged in workshops to develop best practice models of care. Further work will be undertaken on these in October and November with clinicians, and further engagement with patients and the public.
Next steps for the programme
NCL ICB discussed the engagement findings at its meeting on Tuesday 27 September and agreed that further work – such as data analysis – will be carried out on some of the opportunities in the Case for Change, ahead of recommendations on next steps for the programme being considered by the ICB in late November 2022.
Start Well is a long-term programme. Please email nclicb.startwell@nhs.net if you have any feedback, questions, or would like more information.