“What you’ve been doing here is the way to go: professionals and citizens working together to make health and wellbeing better. Just being in the room the patient or lay person changes the conversation.” Jeremy Taylor, Chief Executive, National Voices
“It was exhausting but worthwhile – never underestimate the power of a group to help you!” Veronica Corben, lay partner
“I had an idea to solve a problem around the mental wellbeing of some of our personnel. We have managed to do something that is making a difference to their lives and their wellbeing.” Steve Kilbey, Head of RAF Medical Services
“It’s fantastic!” Dr Nigel Acheson, Medical Director, NHS England South
The Leading Together Programme was developed to make sure that people are involved in creating healthcare systems that meet their needs – and professionals listen and learn from the people who use services.
It aims to create equal conversations, learn skills to lead together, build solutions together, learn from the experience of people who use services to drive change and recognise the value that people’s personal experiences have in helping to create a better system together.
The programme consists of three one-day workshops, spread over three months, for equal numbers of lay people and professionals from the same geographical area. People taking part develop a local project with another participant and share learning at a final celebratory event. Read about some of the Leading Together projects here.
Over 100 people have so far completed The Leading Together Programme. The first ‘Celebrating Success’ event took place in November 2016 – see video and mural above.
Speakers included Jeremy Taylor, Chief Executive, National Voices, and Dr Nigel Acheson, Medical Director, NHS England South. A learning disability focused Leading Together pilot programme was run in 2018, culminating in a ‘graduation’ event in November 2018. Read more here.
The organisations behind Leading Together are the Oxford Academic Health Science Network, NHS England South and the NHS Thames Valley and Wessex Leadership Academy. The Leading Together programme is run by TPC Health.
Read more in this Leading Together case study