This is a key question to address when you know what you are trying to achieve. If you want to change the way diabetes care is designed and commissioned, you need to be clear that any involvement you plan can influence the relevant commissioning bodies.
Partnerships need to be established (or existing partnerships need to be prepared) before launching any user involvement. This means thinking about who needs to be engaged with user involvement, not just within the commissioning and provider organisations, but more widely, including social services and public health. The relevant partners may change over time as new issues emerge and users bring new concerns to the table. Partnership building therefore needs to be an ongoing process that parallels involvement.
If you want your user involvement to deliver, they need to have support and input from the right people to take on board the feedback... If [your partners] are not open-minded about that, then you’re on a hiding to nothing.
Carol Cottingham, NHS Lincolnshire Head of Long Term Conditions
If you are trying to change an aspect of staff practice, or find a new location for a service, you will have different people to influence. Understanding who makes decisions and how they happen will help you make sure the involvement activity has a real impact.
When we’re talking about the decision-making process, it can’t be seen as being in one place, there’s a clinical level, there’s a financial level, there’s an executive level to it, it’s not all in one place.
Shona Brewster, NHS Lincolnshire Diabetes Project Manager
Adrian Mayers (NHS Hammersmith and Fulham Head of Long Term Conditions Commissioning) explains who has been influenced by diabetes user involvement: