Supporting active roles for community leaders
We work with people who take an active role in contributing to their local health and social care systems to help them build knowledge, skills and confidence to engage effectively with the organisations they work with to have a positive influence on the health and wellbeing of their community.
Our experience is that community members have an enormous potential to transform the way health and social care services are delivered when they have a greater voice in sharing their experiences and being part of the conversations to develop service improvements.
We are committed to growing the capacity of community members to develop as leaders in the more formal roles they take on to support their local health system, for example through patient experience groups and lay leader roles.
Our Developing Community Leaders programmes
We provide programmes for people who use and provide health and social care services, both lay people and health professionals, to support them to learn and work together to make a real difference to their organisations and local communities. We look at your organisation’s capacity to work effectively with lay people to deliver services that are inclusive and valued by the people they are intended to serve.
Examples of our work include:
- Immersion experiences that support community leaders to understand their local health and social care system needs and how their role is a positive contribution to supporting their community
- Supporting community leaders to develop communication skills so they can share their experiences and skilfully get their voice heard when representing communities in lay leader roles
- Group coaching and facilitated processes that provide community leaders with opportunities to develop effective influencing skills and the ability to hold difficult conversations
- Skills development programmes that enable community leaders to build confidence to take part in and lead effective meetings with professionals
- Supporting community leaders to build collaborative networks in order to be able to more effectively represent their communities in stakeholder events