To get everyone pulling together in the right way, a skilled facilitator can be invaluable. We provide highly-skilled facilitation services to a range of organisations in this country and abroad, helping teams formulate objectives, launch new initiatives and implement new ways of working. Skilled facilitation is also invaluable to obtain public reaction to new services and initiatives.
Camden PCT – Public Reaction to the NHS Constitution
Big Difference consultant Howard Exton-Smith has facilitated nearly 30 deliberative research events on a range of health and social care issues at Department of Health, National NHS, SHA and PCT levels, so he has a good grasp of their respective interests and responsibilities.
Howard designed and led a series of events to explore the reactions of residents of the London Borough of Camden to the proposed NHS Constitution. (The purpose of the Constitution is to safeguard the core principles and values of the NHS and clarify rights and responsibilities of staff and patients.) Howard developed questionnaires, prompts, timings and support materials and briefed a team of facilitators.
The facilitators guided the discussion and recorded the feedback on computer-based templates which were later analysed to produce the Final Report submitted to the Department of Health.
Post-event evaluations indicated high rates of engagement and satisfaction with the management of the consultation.
Berkshire East PCT – Launch of Staying Healthy
Big Difference was commissioned to design and facilitate a workshop to raise awareness and create engagement for Berkshire East PCT’s Staying Healthy initiative. Staying Healthy aims to reduce hospital admissions through a wide range of health promotion and education activities.
Following detailed discussions with the Director of Public Health and her senior team, we designed the workshop format and produced pre-workshop activities, group work, presentations and materials. The highly interactive workshop was attended by a broad range of people, including GPs, nurse managers, project managers, public health specialists and commissioning managers.
The workshop succeeded in creating project work plans with milestones timelines, KPIs, structures and processes and individual action plans.
Comments from participants:
- The workshop enabled thinking out of the box and defined more positive ways of working and thinking
- It broadened partnership working
- Delivered a much better and clearer understanding of the sub-projects and people priorities
- Kept to time in a very acceptable manner. Well controlled
- Good cross-fertilisation of ideas and ways to make them happen with measurable outcomes
- Helped us get to know key people
- The facilitator made it run very smoothly for us
- It was useful to meet colleagues working on other public health projects
- We worked up project plans, milestones and KPIs
- The facilitator kept us to time