National Care Service - making sure my voice is heard: regional forums - findings summary

How we ran the sessions

We ran two different types of co-design sessions for the Making sure your voice is heard theme. One covered complaints and independent advocacy. Another covered support planning and eligibility criteria.

People who attended took part in group discussions and completed group exercises. We sent a summary of key findings from our research to participants before the sessions (see Annex A). We wanted to get people’s thoughts on these findings. We also wanted to get ideas about what potential improvements can be made.

On the day, we explained the discussion topics and provided written information to make sure the questions were clear.

During the sessions the topics we covered included:

• how we might make it easier for people to make a complaint
• how we might make it easier for people to access independent advocacy services
• how we might improve the way people can access support
• how we might make sure getting support is based on human rights and needs

We also collected feedback about how people felt the session itself went at the end and used this information to improve how other sessions were planned. This was to make the regional forums as accessible as possible for participants and to make sure we were asking the right questions. Because of this, the discussion questions changed slightly between the first regional forum and the last regional forum.