23. Evidence submitted by Craven, Harrogate
& Rural District PPI Forum Group (PPI 12)
1. The purpose of patient and public involvement
is to ensure that local people input their views into strategy
planning and delivery of their local health service.
2. A secondary purpose is to ensure that
patients receive appropriate information regarding their NHS organisations.
3. There seems to me to be no reason for
reforming the existing PPI Forums. PPI Forums were set up to fail;
they were provided with little or no appropriate support. CHCs
had experienced CHC Officers who were familiar with local and
national issues, and the experience of our Forum the form support
organisation did little more than read the rule book and book
a room occasionally, and take minutes which were often illiterate,
little or no support or guidance was given to the Forum regarding
the NHS.
4. Over a period of some three years, members
who were dedicated to their local NHS acquired considerable experience.
A number of exemplary activities were carried out, for example,
the PPI Forum worked on a advisory questionnaire for patients
suggesting the questions that patients could ask of their healthcare
professional in a appropriate circumstances. The Forum also contributed
to work on the PILS leaflet in pharmacies, to providing knowledge
of the NHS for those whose first language was not English, and
worked closely with its primary care trust and was consulted on
matters of change and where possible consulted the public.
5. The membership was consistently lower
than it should have been, there was little or no training, but
in its third year, where members are acquiring real ability to
scrutinises an input, it is being abolished.
6. I personally do not see the point of
LINks as it has no teeth as constituted at present, it will simply
be a "talking shop" and I think that very few people
who are interested in doing something in their local community
will be prepared to serve. If it is to be reinvented, it should
reinvented with a statutory powers of PPI Forums, or alternatively
the Local Authority Scrutiny Committees should be reconstituted,
given much greater officer support than at present, and should
broaden their overview. An alternative is that Forums become a
local arm for the Healthcare Commission.
Craven, Harrogate & Rural District PPI Forum
Group
January 2007
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