National Cabinet Office guidance requires consultation, engagement and involvement to be ‘reasonable and proportionate’ to the subject matter being engaged on.
We do our best to enable people to have a say in keeping with the spirit of the above statement. This involves making ‘reasonable adjustments’ to enable participation, paying expenses and agreeing codes of conduct.
Principles supporting good consultation
The government has published guidance on conducting consultations. The guidance was revised in 2018 and is available at Consultation principles: Guidance.
We follow the Gunning Principles for effective consultation:
- The Consultation Institute’s guide to the Gunning Principles
- Local Government Association (LGA) guidance on engagement
NHS England’s participation and engagement
Co-production resources
- Think Local Act Personal
- National Co-production Advisory Group
- Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) guide to co-production
- Co-production Collective – a national community of people involved in co-production
Easy read
In order to empower people with learning disabilities by enabling to understand as much as possible, written documents are produced in easy read format.
Easy read makes use of pictures, symbols and photographs along with jargon-free text in short sentences.
We advise and train staff on use of easy read, produce key documents ourselves in that format and administer the licences to enable staff to use Photosymbols software to produce their own easy read documents, such as minutes of safeguarding meetings.
We have also created easy read versions of care management forms in co-production with people with learning disabilities.
Impact assessment support
Impact assessments are a way of informing decision-makers of the effect that changes to services will have on people with characteristics protected under the Equality Act 2010 and must be carried out when making significant public-facing decisions.
Impact assessments can be used as evidence in court cases as a means of proving that people who use services and relevant communities have been engaged on the proposed changes so that any potential negative impacts are identified along with the possible action to mitigate them.
The Involvement Team is able to support managers with the production of impact assessments and ensure they are published in the public domain in time to inform the decisions they are covering.
Key partners
We work with a range of specialist organisations to help undertake engagement activities.