Get Involved
NHS Southend CCG would like to ensure that you, our public, understand how you can get involved in your local health service. Your views are important to us as a CCG and we are waiting to hear from you. There are a variety of ways in which you can get involved.
- Find out opportunities to shape health and care services in 2020
- Patient Participation Groups (PPGs) at your GP practice: speak to your GP Practice Manager to find out more joining your local practice group
- Public events: Southend CCG attends local community events, public meetings and various forums to hear feedback and collect patient experiences. We often work with our voluntary partner SAVS who host meetings on our behalf - sign up to their newsletter for more information.
- Southend CCG meetings: Our Governing Body and Joint Primary Care Co-Commissioning Committee meet in public and everyone is welcome. The public may ask questions, but they must be provided to the CCG prior to the meeting date.
- Social media: Follow us on Twitter or Facebook
- Voluntary and community organisations: Get involved with health support groups and find out more about local service.
- Surveys and feedback forms
- Apply to join our Patient and Community Reference Group email sccg.communications@nhs.net
- Read our Public and Patient Engagement Annual Report 2018-19
- Join our Readers Panel
- Watch some of the Patient Stories from our Governing Body meetings
Our communications and engagement strategy
Involving the public helps us to understand people’s needs, and to prioritise those people who experience the poorest health outcomes – enabling us to improve access and reduce health inequalities.
We host staff training sessions about the role of communications and engagement, supply a guide to involvement and a plan template designed to help CCG commissioners fulfil their statutory duties and involve patients and the public effectively and systematically. Our staff also use an Equality Impact Assessment to enable us to consider all the information about a service, policy or strategy from an equalities perspective and then action plan to get the best outcomes for service users.
Read our Communications and Engagement Strategy
It’s important that we understand the lived experience of local health services. Please contact Healthwatch Southend, who we work closely with to monitor patient experience in our community.
If you need any of our documents in alternative formats such as, larger print, easy read, braille, audio format or different languages, please contact sccg.communications@nhs.net.