www.publicinvolvement.org.uk

• The Centre was going to be a store of best practice and focus on those involvement activities associated with the evaluation of health services and the development of health services - not primarily concerned with individual patient involvement in decision-making about treatment or in research or teaching. To see the Centre's full business plan 2006/7 go to www.nhscentreforinvolvement.nhs.uk. The three main domains of the centre are represented as Research and Best Practice; Learning and Support and Organisational Development.
  
  
  
• PPI to be brought into the mainstream and is recognised (if done properly) of having the capacity to transform the NHS.
• Yes but would the new set-up be able to address the bigger harder questions of budgets and priorities? What did PPI practitioners and ministers have to say to weekend demos on saving hospitals? Could we hope to see an informed dialogue that help get us beyond defensive local protectionism?
• Would the Centre's stated emphasis on professionalising PPI and creating a career path and qualifications for PPI NHS people mean that they would all be bland management clones? Where was the diversity and spread of views? Was all this still not too mono-ethnic and where was the capacity to challenge the status quo?
• Independence was not a pre-requisite for the Centre to fulfil its purpose of facilitating dialogue and learning. It would evaluate and develop best practice based on evidence
• A phrase repeated more than once was 'civic energy' 'going with the grain of civic energy' and other new or newish vocabularies were 'Patient-Citizen', 'Agency' and 'Identity'. Creating 'Public Value' another as well as the Centre's own Patient-Citizen Exchange drawing on the People Bank it will set up.
• How much should accountability be distinguished from the process of service improvement? Certainly the Centre priorities as stated were to give health service staff the ability to hear and the means to create accountability. Did it matter?
• Interesting mention of the situation in social care with a long history of involvement - particular reference to the campaign by disabled people to direct payments to buy their own care; how they do it differently and how difficult many providers are finding it to let go.
• Web 2.0 would play an increasingly important enabling role e.g. Flickr where instead of a long text, a photo of the dirty loo on Ward 12 would do the trick to spark the conversation
• Much referenced was the previous night's Channel 4 Dispatches programme about post code health and empowering patients to get the care they are entitled to
• Thoughts on empowerment - before they seize the opportunities to empower themselves, people need positive experience of institutions and contexts where they have been listened to and their views acted upon. Is this one reason why some groups are hard to reach - do those groups have poor experiences of being ignored and so consider any further investment of time and energy wasted?
• There was a lot of energy and experience in the room - all or most hoping that this time it will work and that it will last. There is no challenge now to the idea that the patient view must be heard - as ever the challenge lies in the how and the when.
• Will the new book help? "Healthy Democracy - The future of involvement in health and social care" was handed out to the departing delegates. 12 Essays by PPI people. Get your copy from Involve at www.involve.org.uk or the Centre.

See our articles on Public and Patient Involvement both on our main site and here in the publicinvolvement blog.

We remain available for help on all matters relating to public involvement and consultation – see one of our current projects on the City and Hackney Teaching Primary Care Trust: chpct.nhs.uk/trust_.../Hackney44pp2.pdf