Have your say about the Mandate for Change
NHS England’s Chief Allied Health Professions Officer encourages wider engagement to the second stage of shaping the mandate for change.
We will be opening the online workshop for the second time on Monday 4 July to gain wider views on the Allied Health Professions emerging Mandate for Change.
The Mandate describes:
- four ways AHPs will impact the health and wider care system.
- four areas of commitment to achieve this change.
- four themes which AHPs need to focus on to deliver this.
We are committed to working in partnership with patients and citizens in communities to make the most of their valuable insights and ideas and are, therefore, particularly keen to hear from service users/patients, carers and the wider public.
Their direct experience of services delivered by AHPs means they have unique insight in to what works and this can be used to improve services. We believe this is an essential part of making health and care services better for everyone.
We would also like to hear from other organisations and professionals working in health, care and the wider system who work in collaboration with AHPs and their services to offer their view on this emerging mandate.
And, for those AHPs who contributed to the first phase of this work, imagine the impact if you asked or enabled just one patient or person in the wider community to share their view and have their voice heard.
The emerging mandate was presented at the Chief Allied Health Professions Officer Annual Conference a week ago and was extremely well received by many of the 400 delegates.
I received lots of positive feedback and here are the comments of just two people in the audience:
“I think what we have collectively achieved here is nothing short of revolutionary actually the way that healthcare strategy is shaped”.
“I’m a qualitative researcher and listening to what you have done I just think that it sounds like a superb piece of work to me. It just sounds so valid, it sounds reliable, because you have got people’s voices and you have gone out to so many people, it just sounds brilliant. So I am really looking forward to it being published in October, can’t wait”.
And it’s not too late for you to have your say. Please log on to the Clever Together website at any time from 4 to 15 July to view the consensus output from the first part of the AHP consultation and offer your thoughts on whether the mandate, as it is expressed at this stage, makes sense to you.
Remember, this online workshop is not a survey, but an interactive conversation open to anyone who wishes to engage to provide comment and feedback. You will be able to share your views, look at the views of others and offer feedback by voting and commenting on their contributions.
You will also be able to come back to the conversation at any time while the workshop is live, to check what others think of your ideas, and respond to queries or questions they may have.
There is also an option on the platform to invite other people to participate. Please encourage them to have a voice also. You can also forward on the registration link to any colleagues, teams or local community / professional networks you are engaged with, we need everyone to take part. You can get involved from any computer, tablet or smartphone, at any time.
For anyone coming to the Mandate for the first time, the background to it is that we launched the first stage of the online workshop on 18 April 2016. We are using it as a platform to engage with Allied Health Professionals across England to co-create a vision of how, with collective action, our nation will be different if all AHPs were used effectively in the health, social and wider care system.
The response was nothing short of amazing, with 1360 people posting ideas, comments and votes, discussing, defining and realising the collective potential of AHPs to transform future care delivery in England and how what they need to do to achieve that. Analysis of over 10,000 ideas, comments and votes during this phase resulted in an emerging mandate for change.
With your further input, the programme of work enters a new vital stage with the work due to be completed in October 2016 when the final results will be launched.
- You can follow Suzanne on Twitter at: @SuzanneRastrick
- View more information about Allied Health Professions.
Professor Suzanne Rastrick OBE
Suzanne qualified as an Occupational Therapist from Oxford. Suzanne was the first Allied Health Professional (AHP) to hold a substantive Director of Nursing post in both provider and commissioning organisations. She became the Chief Executive of a Primary Care Trust, where a particular highlight was having leadership responsibility for delivering health resilience and health ‘blue light’ services during the Olympic sailing events held in Dorset in 2012. She subsequently gained authorisation for a large Clinical Commissioning Group, before moving to her current post with NHS England. She was appointed as Chief Allied Health Professions Officer for England in September 2014.
In 2017 Suzanne launched the first AHP strategy for England which has been recognised as ground-breaking in policy development from its use of crowdsourcing. Building on this, Suzanne published the second AHP strategy – ‘AHPs Deliver’ in June 2022. This iteration had a greater emphasis on patient, public voice and specifically the inclusion of those who may be digitally excluded along with communities who may find it difficult to connect with traditional consultation methods. The result is a national strategy crowdsourced from diverse populations for people and communities AHPs serve.
For over three decades, Suzanne has held non-executive portfolios outside of the NHS, including audit committee chair roles, predominantly in the housing and charitable sector. Suzanne was recognised as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the Queen’s birthday honours list 2019. In 2023 Suzanne was awarded a Visiting Professor role at St George’s, University of London and at Oxford Brookes University.
Follow Suzanne on Twitter/X @SuzanneRastrick or Instagram @chief_ahp_officer_england