26 February 2015
Name
Address
Date
Dear ,
Independent Complaints Advocacy Network
We are writing to you and to other Chief Executives of organisations providing NHS
Complaints Advocacy (NHSCA) services to invite your comments and interest in working
together with other providers of this service nationally.
This letter arises out of an initial discussion in January between several NHSCA providers,
particularly the Carers Federation, SEAP, POhWER, VoiceAbility, NCompass Advocacy
Service and Cloverleaf Advocacy. We started talking together as we each thought that there
might be a contribution which we could make collectively to improve things for people who
use our services.
We recognised quickly that we share a view that fundamental change is needed to the
system for complaints in the NHS and that we have a shared commitment to achieving this.
We considered however, that rather than merely lobbying for change, we have both an
opportunity and a responsibility to do what is within our control to improve the system. In
particular, we began to explore what positive steps we might take together, with some limited
support from system partners and without requiring legislative change.
At that juncture we agreed to do two things.
- Write to you and other providers of NHSCA services to set out our initial thinking and
to seek your views and engagement.
- Contact the NHS Complaints Program Board, which is chaired by the Department of
Health and includes representatives of the national statutory organisations. Our letter
to them similarly set out our preliminary thoughts and invited their comments and
engagement.
We should emphasise that we are currently at a very early stage in our thinking as we
wanted to approach you before taking things further.
The specific areas in which we thought it would be beneficial for us to work on as a provider
network in the medium term are described below. We would like to know whether you would
be interested in participating equally with us in this. We would really welcome your views and
comments on these and about other issues which you think that we could and should work
on as a potential provider network.
1. Enabling the NHSCA service becoming better recognised and understood by the
public and professionals, including generating common communication messages
about the service.
We think that there is much that we could do together as a provider network to
achieve this. But we also realise that achieving a better recognised and understood
service would be facilitated by the support of commissioners and we sought the
Program Board’s assistance in encouraging this. A meeting, which had already been
discussed, has now been convened by the Department of Health, including
representatives of local government to consider how public and professional
recognition of the NHSCA service can be improved. We are hopeful this will be
productive.
2. We believe that a common set of quality standards is required for NHSCA. We are
pleased that HealthWatch England has made progress in developing potential
standards and think that these provide a helpful starting point. We believe that these
need to be further refined so that they fully reflect the needs of people using NHSCA
services and potentially also users of social care.
We also thought that any set of standards would benefit from NHSCA providers
working closely together to ensure their implementation. We know that the Secretary
of State has been asked to consider the regulatory basis needed to implement and
monitor the standards developed by HealthWatch England. That might be one way to
get them implemented. However if it does not appear likely that standards will be
introduced in such a way within a reasonable timescale, then we thought that it might
be worth exploring the possibility of introducing appropriate standards as a sector led
voluntary code.
3. We identified the potential for NHSCA providers to work together to develop and
implement a common minimum data set and work with system partners to make use
of this. This would provide for better national information about the contribution of
NHSCA, greater transparency about service levels in each Local Authority and
across the country.
4. Finally and very practically, we know that it is not as easy as it should be for
members of the public, or professionals, to identify which organisation provides
NHSCA and where. (Indeed we had some difficulty in obtaining up to date
information and contact details ourselves and despite our best efforts we suspect that
some of the letters which we are sending to Chief Executives of NHSCA services
might not be correctly addressed!).
There would be value in there being a single up-to-date directory of NHSCA
providers on a public facing website which is linked to extensively by local health
organisations and others. (This could for example be hosted on NHS Choices, but
there may be other appropriate central points). It would facilitate access and referral
to the service by the public, community and third sector organisations and health
professionals alike. We thought that this is an area in which NHSCA providers could
help.
So far, whilst we have discussed these issues and share a commitment to working together,
we do not yet have any formal structure or dedicated budget. We are not necessarily
seeking to establish either at this stage and are not currently looking for contributions from
organisations other than their views and engagement. It is possible in time that we may want
to explore a link with the Advocacy Action Alliance which is currently under development,
formalise our partnership in a different way, or conversely to remain as an entirely informal
network. These are things for the future.
We do however believe that regardless of the exact way in which we take this forward, we
should try to pool our efforts and our commitment in order to achieve some practical positive
changes for people who use our services or may benefit from them in the future.
We have received a very welcoming initial response from the Chair of the Program Board.
We hope that you will also see the potential value in us working together and want to engage
with us in this. Please do let us know your views and whether you would be willing to
become a part of this network.
Dependent upon the response to this letter, we will then agree the next steps. These may
include a meeting in the coming weeks, the establishment of a virtual forum or both. We
recognise that the degree to which each organisation is engaged in NHSCA and the time
that we have to engage in initiatives beyond our immediate service delivery vary. So we
would also be interested in your views as to how best to engage with you in the future.
We have attached a response slip which you may find helpful - but its use is entirely
optional.
We would be grateful for your reply by Friday 13 March. Please respond to Jonathan
Senker: jonathan.senker@voiceability.org (07595 608 700) and copy any emails to his PA
Claire Lines: claire.lines@voiceability.org.
Please do feel free to telephone or email any one of us to discuss further; our contact details
are below.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Yours sincerely,
Julia Tabreham
Chief Executive Carers Federation
juliatabreham@carersfederation.co.uk
0115 962 9339
Marie Casey
Chief Executive SEAP
marie.casey@seap.org.uk
0330 440 9000
Damian Brady
Chief Executive POhWER
d.brady@pohwer.net
0300 456 2370
Jonathan Senker
Chief Executive VoiceAbility
jonathan.senker@voiceability.org
07595 608700
Caroline Sagar
Chief Executive NCompass
CSagar@ncompassnorthwest.co.uk
01253 362140
Roger Milthorp
Chief Executive Cloverleaf Advocacy
Roger.Milthorp@cloverleaf-advocacy.co.uk
01924 454875