Category

Management & Innovation

05.11.08 | Colin Adamson

November’s Newsletter: No downturn here - M-A-C blogging team’s creative outputs breaks all records Complaint Handling, Management & Innovation, NHS, Ombudsman, Policy Governance®, Public Involvement, Schools, Surveys | (0)
10 posts since 30th September represents an all-time record as M-A-C engages with the issues and causes dear to our collective and individual hearts. Our first ever post back in 2003 was about our central interest - user involvement. A theme echoed in this month's output with Andrew's post Engagement isn't enough. Two posts later, we were taking a look at Ann Abraham's approach to her then quite new job as Health Ombudsman. Complaints and the way they are managed and treated and what they mean for the organisations trying to deal with them are another abiding interest - see the piece on 24th looking at how common themes can emerge from different surveys of the complainant/ customer experience. It is not all about the familiar themes - since 2003 we have broadened our interests to embrace two new areas - Policy Governance and parental involvement in schools. In the case of ...
Continue reading: November’s Newsletter: No downturn here - M-A-C blogging team’s creative outputs breaks all records
27.10.08 | Valerie Moore

Policy Governance® UK Case History: Val Moore hears how it works in Foundation Trusts Clients, Management & Innovation, NHS, Policy Governance® | (2)
It was great to see John Bruce and John Gilham, the Chairman and Chief Executive respectively of Southend University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust demonstrating how Policy Governance® (PG) worked for them as they set out the case history of their experience in launching and managing the UK's most comprehensive PG-based governance initiative. Their Hospital Board is implementing Policy Governance in full and their experiences along the way inspired delegate after delegate who said the speakers had brought Policy Governance to life and shown its relevance and application in a modern NHS. Their presentation was made at a workshop at Birkbeck College London University on 22nd October 2008 when over 30 people came together to hear more about Policy Governance®, the model developed by John and Miriam Carver. Since attending the Policy Governance Academy when it was held in the UK some three years ago, I have been a little frustrated by ...
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24.10.08 | Colin Adamson

Complaint Data - common themes confirmed in different surveys Complaint Handling, Management & Innovation, NHS, Social Care | (2)
It gets a little dispiriting if you work with complaints and complainants to see the same old messages emerge in survey after survey as the years go by. If I was a complainant, I would be tempted to be very rude to the next person who wanted me to complete a survey about the experience I had with my complaint. The questionnaires or the questioner have a little spiel along the lines of "your experiences will help us greatly in improving the way we handle complaints". Really? There seems to be little sign of that. The National Audit Office has taken a look at complaint handling in both health and social care services in anticipation of the creation of a single complaints system in 2009. Our friends at the Customer Care Alliance and Surveylab have just published their annual look at the complainant experience across a variety of markets and providers ...
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23.10.08 | Andrew Craig

No Authority? Then No Accountability - the Policy Governance® View on the NHS Constitution Management & Innovation, NHS, Policy Governance®, Public Involvement | (1)
The consultation on the proposed NHS Constitution closed last week. The UK Policy Governance Association (UKPGA) said it all for us in their submission. M-A-C partners have been big fans of the “policy governance”® approach for public sector boards and Valerie Moore is an accredited PG practitioner. ( See our main website ) The UKPGA submission focused on two key aspects: accountability and local determination of needs. Those have to sorted out first before service users can be clear about what their entitlements to services are. But the NHS Constitution lacks a statement of accountability – ie there is no answer to the question “to whom is it accountable and for what and how is that accountability to be exercised?” M-A-C previously tried to interest our (then new) Prime Minister in this when we suggested to Mr Brown back in June 2007 that in his enthusiasm for the NHS, he needed to be ...
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30.09.08 | Andrew Craig

Expanding LINks? Local Involvement Network, Management & Innovation, NHS, Public Involvement | (2)
Forget the DH site, the place to look for what's happening in public and service user engagement is increasingly Communities and Local Government (CLG), which is churning out more useful stuff about civic engagement and community participation across the board. But should we welcome this uncritically, especially when it involves LINks? For instance, I noticed this in the most recent Consultation Institute newsletter: "Gung-ho CLG seems so enthused by LINks that it seems keen to expand the concept beyond health and social care and is inviting Councils to submit proposals. Where this leads is anybody’s guess but the idea of networks of interested stakeholders is a powerful concept." Is this an idea linked (no pun intended) with CLG minister Hazel Blears - she of the recent community empowerment white paper and participatory budgeting experiments - to extend LINks straight across everything a Council does? Sounds like the kind of thing that the "government in waiting" might be keen on too. And it ...
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29.09.08 | Colin Adamson

An invitation to help us refocus our purpose and our offer Local Involvement Network, Management & Innovation, Public Involvement, Surveys | (1)
The Partnership is having one of those moments of corporate introspection when we look at what we do and think about the best way to explain it to our clients - present and future - and to ourselves too. (jump to our strap-line competition here) So we have done a bit of brainstorming and come up with twenty suggestions on how we might define what we offer to clients and encapsulate that in a pithy and memorable way. The new phrase will go as part of a new look on our website. We need an outside eye and would like to invite you to help us choose which one describes us best. Our current account of ourselves and what we do can be seen at www.mooreadamsoncraig.co.uk and the associated blog site here (www.publicinvolvement.org.uk) site. This is, as many readers will at once realise, is an example of the approach know as 'crowdsourcing'. The phrase ...
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18.09.08 | Colin Adamson

September Re-entry (September newsletter) Clients, Local Involvement Network, Management & Innovation, NHS, Social networking | (0)
The title of the newsletter would sound better in French: 'la rentrée' - a season in France when the State re-awakens after its long summer off and the supermarkets are filled with bargain notebooks and pens - the ones that are all squares and no lines. It is much more than 'back to school' and money off school shoes. On Leadership & Management in Business Shoes are on my mind because I have been reading the latest book by John Timpson of Timpson Shoe Repairs. The book talks about the reasons for the survival of Timpson Shoe Repairs when so many other larger and equally well-established companies have gone to the wall. The high street is a pretty spooky place if you think about it filled with the ghosts of retail chains - ou sont tous les magasins 'd'antan'? as François Villon would have put it looking at the C15th retail scene. ...
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