Planning your involvement

It is important to plan carefully for how you will engage with people and communities. Your plan should draw on information in this guidance, but there are some key questions to consider early in your planning.

Questions to ask as part of your plan

Who do you want to involve?

Are you looking to involve people with particular experiences or backgrounds?

Have you considered how you will ensure diverse representation, including from seldom heard groups?

How will you involve people and communities?

Will you invite them to meetings?

Will you ask them to give feedback?

Will you ask for a short-term or long-term commitment?

Remember that you want to build long-term and lasting relationships with people and communities, not transactional ones.

Will you pay expenses or fees?

Refer back to the NHS England patient and public voice partners policy.

Consider whether you should reimburse travel and expenses, or whether you should provide an involvement payment. The NHS England expenses policy provides further information.

What kind of induction or briefing will you provide?

Will you arrange a call beforehand to provide background information?

Will you send through any information packs or pre-reading?

Have you considered logistics?

If you're running an event or engagement session, do you need to send around agendas, checklists or briefing notes?

If you are working with user researchers, have you checked what they have and need?

Will you need consent forms for your work?

If you are using online tools, have you had a test run through beforehand?

Have you considered accessibility requirements?

Plan to have a conversation with your participants about any adjustments or accessibility requirements.

You might decide to have a tech run through with them individually or post in advance printed materials for the session, rather than sending electronically. You should ensure that any documents you do send follow accessibility requirements.

Consider how you will include autistic people and people with a learning disability. Has information been produced in an easy read format? You can read more about involving autistic people and people with a learning disability on the NHS England website. You can also get further advice from the Learning Disability and Autism Engagement Team by emailing engage@nhs.net.

How will you provide feedback?

How will you let people know what decisions you have taken on the basis of their contribution?