Change Model Stage 3: Engaging with people

How to engage with people

Too often there is pressure to move to taking actions, and to carry out the process without enough time and resource built in to engage meaningfully. The way we engage people in change can build respect and trust beyond the initial focus and activities.

A clear plan is necessary for the process of listening, involving and responding to people. This will ensure people’s passion is not restricted, and the process can reach a point where there is agreement on what’s needed and possible. Asking people to engage is an ‘opportunity cost’ for them – if they are working on a change, then they have less time for something else in their work or personal lives, so they must believe it will make a difference (and this needs to be genuine).

People who draw on care and support, carers and practitioners have often been promised positive changes in the past, but then felt let down when this didn’t materialise – so trust must be built through open and respectful communication.

‘Backroom’ and more technical functions like procurement, HR, finance and IT can sometimes get left out till later in the proposed change – involving them from the start can avoid later obstacles.

Examples within IMPACT

The Network considering Choice and Control involved people with lived experience from Swansea. They had previously set up a user-led co-operative called ‘Friends United Together’ to pool their budgets after their support service was retendered. They joined the Network as they were keen to attract new members and share their learning more broadly.

The Network connected Friends United Together with local authority staff, the support provider and the Cwmpas development agency. The group created a video to share learning about their co-operative and highlight the increased choice, control and independence they had experienced.

IMPACT supported the group to tell their story in a way that they chose, providing training on videography so they could make their own film. This helped to amplify the voices of people with lived experience, which led to the development of positive outputs and outcomes. The film is a powerful tool that can be used to promote the work of the group and share learning and good practice with other social care stakeholders.

The Waiting Well Demonstrator was hosted by the East Midlands Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) to respond to concerns about people waiting to access adult social care services.

The project brought together people who draw on care and support, unpaid carers and staff from the region to hear about their experiences of waiting. The project undertook several activities to collect and collate evidence as the basis for decision making including a literature review, co-production workshops, survey and interviews.

A Co-production Steering Group was established with members including people who draw on care and/or support, unpaid carers, front-line local authority and care provider staff, Healthwatch UK and voluntary services organisations alongside East Midlands ADASS. The Steering Group met monthly and provided strategic co-production oversight, support and challenge to the project. 

In addition, monthly meetings of the Project Management Group, consisting of a senior representative from each local authority in the East Midlands, colleagues from East Midlands ADASS and Partners in Care and Health, supported the effective and successful delivery of project outcomes. The successful co-production with people with lived experience has provided a blueprint for future regional co-production including a process for paying people for their contributions.

In Bury, we:

  • Involved more than fifty people in structured research conversations, including people attending day opportunities and their families and carers, which produced rich insights into what people valued and hoped for from day services in the future.
  • Developed training plans for Persona staff, with a focus on skills to co-produce with people with complex communication needs. The plans built on a partnership with the Challenging Behaviour Foundation during the project, which allowed Persona to draw on expertise from What Matters to Me, a three-year project that engaged people with profound and multiple learning disabilities, and their families and support circles.

The Building Research Capacity in Occupational Therapy project was less focussed on identifying theunderlying issues and barriers (as these were already known), but rather on getting together OTs interested in research to create energy and ideas.

The project organised a series of regional ‘hacks’, in which OT practitioners and managers came together to discuss, debate and plan for topics of shared interest. The hacks were open to anyone who was interested. These included how to develop a research proposal, how to use evidence in practice, co-producing with people and communities and how to present your work.

Each hack involved short inputs to stimulate discussion and insights, individual and group activities, and networking. These encourage personal and collective reflection and led to individual and regional opportunities being identified.