Communications and Engagement
BCPC System Lead: Sally Evans (RWT and WHT)
The work of our communications and engagement workstream has slowly gathered pace, supporting the work of the Provider collaborative through the following:
Newsletters
Newsletters are published highlighting the progress being made by the BCPC as a whole, but always taking the opportunity to ‘spotlight’ a clinical specialty that has made particular progress in delivering a priority that may need wider communication.
Initially these were published paper copies, but with the introduction of the BCPC website, these are now published electronically and linked to all four partner websites.
BCPC Website
A website for the BCPC has been established and operational since March 2023. It provides an opportunity for the BCPC to promote its context, vision, goals/objectives, and priorities within its work-plan and updates on the progress being made of our work programmes.
The BCPC website will become increasingly more important as a means of communicating with staff and stakeholders particularly as we continue to pursue improvement and transformation which may include aspects of service change that require wider engagement and consultation.
Moving forward it is our intent to use the website to share progress updates, development and establishment of clinical guidelines, proposals for transformation, and key strategic documents
Engagement Activities
The communications team has been proactive in supporting the design and promotion of key engagement activities such as the quarterly Clinical Summits hosted by the BCPC.
With an average of over a hundred and eighty delegates attending, from across the four partner organisations and wider BC stakeholders, supported by some high profile key note speakers, these clinical summits have been vital engagement opportunities to showcase the work being undertaken, promote the collaborative culture, build trust and relationships, and motivate system colleagues to drive improvement and change.
Profile and Reputation
The BCPC has continued to raise its profile and enhance its reputation, routinely being asked to present to national and regional forums which have included NHS Providers, Regional Meetings, BC ICB Masterclass on Provider Collaboratives.
More recently the Managing Director has supported peers in other ICS’s on the development of their Provider Collaboratives (Bath and Northeast Somerset ICS, NHS Derby and Derbyshire, Norfolk and Waveney ICS) and the SRO and CMO have been invited to present our learnings in establishing a Provider Collaborative.
We are active participants in national ‘learning sets’ and the SRO has also presented at key recent forums which include the NHSE QRSM and a meeting to brief the ICS MPs on the development and progress of Provider Collaboratives.
Service Change
With the scale of transformation that is being pursued by the BCPC, a key role that the communications and engagement team is increasingly working on is to comply with the requirements of the NHSE ‘assurance process for service change’.
Working with relevant project teams and programme leads, the ICB is notified of proposed change in service delivery, and when assessed against their criteria if the scale of the proposed change triggered the NHSE assurance process, the communications and engagement team would be central to responding to the requirements of the four-stage process.
For the BCPC, this has recently been triggered in relation to the proposed ‘North Hub’ elective orthopaedic cold site at Cannock Chase, and in parallel with broader strategic gateways, work has commenced on ensuring that there is a robust process of engagement and consultation prior to the progression of this development.
As the ‘North Hub’ is amongst the first key pieces of our ‘elective care transformation’ it is anticipated that further service change processes will be required to commence later in the financial year, specifically around our desire to create ‘Centres of Excellence’ and better organise our service delivery options through ‘Networked Service Solutions’.