All patients should have the opportunity to provide feedback on their experiences of using NHS-funded healthcare and we can help to achieve this by making sure that the Friends and Family Test (FFT) is as accessible as possible.

The FFT guidance section ‘7.3 Making the FFT Inclusive’ sets out advice as to how particular groups of people can be supported and empowered to participate in the FFT.

Tips and examples

Our case studies provide examples of the work of some providers to make the FFT inclusive.

We also have a number of examples of work undertaken around the country in recent years to make the FFT inclusive for people who might otherwise be excluded.  Please note that these may feature the previous FFT question rather than the current one, but much of the good practice still applies.  You can ask to see these examples by emailing england.friendsandfamilytest@nhs.net.  If you then use material produced by any of the contributing organisations, please remember to credit them.

Children and young people

Monkey Wellbeing offer a range of downloadable feedback forms suitable for children and young people in a range of healthcare settings, along with promotional posters.

We have some other examples from Birmingham Children’s Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, who have kindly given their permission for their materials to be shared as good practice.  Please note that these may feature the previous FFT question rather than the current one but much of the good practice still applies.

Learning Disabilities

We can share a guide to help NHS staff to support people with a learning disability so that they can give feedback on their experiences.  We also have some examples of how to present the FFT question in an “easy read” format across different healthcare services. This means presenting text in a simple, easy to understand format, sometimes with pictures.  This format can be useful for people with learning disabilities, but may also be beneficial for children and for other people with other conditions affecting how they process information.

See our Communications Resources page for details of our set of downloadable easy read feedback forms.

Other conditions – Dementia, deaf, blind and vision loss

We can offer tips on how to make it easier for people with dementia to give feedback; information for staff on how to support a profoundly deaf person and on the use of British Sign Language interpreters; and we have some examples of large print formats for people with vision loss.

The FFT question and response options presented as short videos in British Sign Language are available for 15 healthcare settings.

Please contact our FFT helpdesk to request any of these.

Translation to other languages

The opportunity to give feedback should also be available to people whose first language is not English.  We can provide translations of the FFT question for a range of languages across different healthcare settings (see below).  There are also some tips available on the use of interpreters. Contact our helpdesk for details.

Question translations for Making the FFT Inclusive

We can help with prepared translations for a range of questions and response options, to be used as set out in the FFT implementation guidance section ‘7.3 Making the FFT Inclusive’.  These are available in the following languages: Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Bengali, Bulgarian, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Czech, Farsi, French, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Kurdish Sorani, Lithuanian, Pashto, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Somali, Spanish, Tamil, Tigrinya, Turkish, Urdu and Vietnamese.

Please contact our FFT helpdesk at england.friendsandfamilytest@nhs.net for access to any of the materials described.