In 2005, the UK Department of Health commissioned a national “listening exercise” about the National Health Service called “Your health, your care, your say." 4 regional events with 50–100 people took place, after which a 986-person “National Citizen’s Summit” was held.
Problems and Purpose
The “Your health, your care, your say” event was designed to give citizens a chance to bring up issues and suggestions about the National Health Service that they thought were important. It also allowed them to create some concrete goals for service expectations.
Background History and Context
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Organizing, Supporting, and Funding Entities
Opinion Leader Research (OLR) was commissioned by the Department of Health to conduct the national “listening exercise”.
Participant Recruitment and Selection
Four regional events were held, each attended by 50-100 randomly selected people from among the 25,000 that were originally contacted and surveyed.
Methods and Tools Used
What Went On: Process, Interaction, and Participation
Four regional events were held, where participants were broken into groups of 10 members with a facilitator to spend a day discussing the questions and ideas that were set out. At the end of the day, the groups would convene to talk with each other and present finding to government ministers that were present. After the regional meetings, a “National Citizen’s Summit” was held, with 986 people from around the nation participating. There was a reconvened event in London in March 2006, attended by 110 people who had already attended previous events. The four regional events were in Gateshead, Leicester, London and Plymouth, the national summit was in Birmingham. Alongside these mini-publics, 29,808 people completed the self-completion online and paper-based core questionnaire and 8,460 people took part in ‘local listening exercises.’
Influence, Outcomes, and Effects
The summit was televised live and the results were written into a “white paper” called “Our Health, Our Care, Our Say” in 2006. A follow up event, “Holding the Government to Account” was held with 120 of the original participants in the summit. At this event, people who had been at previous deliberative events heard the Secretary of State for Health, alongside two Ministers from health and social care, report back to them on what had been taken forward from the YHYCYS exercise into the White Paper, and asking for feedback on the participants’ satisfaction with what had been done with their input.
A year after the “Holding” event, Opinion Leader Research held a half day event that allowed 84 of the original participants to review the suggestions put forth by the white paper, and what success these had. Questioning of the participants showed great variation in what people remembered, and people’s opinions on what changes, if any, had been seen in the health care system. The Secretary of State and the National Director of primary care were present and able to act as witnesses, explaining what progress had been made and what still needed to be done.
Analysis and Lessons Learned
It is difficult to gauge the direct effects of the event. While a white paper was published, the degree to which the summit’s findings were applied in the day-to-day experience in the NHS system remains unclear.
See Also
References
[1] Paulis, Emilien; Pilet, Jean-Benoit; Panel, Sophie; Vittori, Davide; Close, Caroline, 2020, "POLITICIZE Dataset", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/Z7X6GT, Harvard Dataverse, V1
External Links
Notes
This entry is based on the POLITICIZE dataset. More information can be found at the following links:
- Paulis, Emilien; Pilet, Jean-Benoit; Panel, Sophie; Vittori, Davide; Close, Caroline, 2020, "POLITICIZE Dataset", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/Z7X6GT, Harvard Dataverse, V1
- Pilet J-B, Paulis E, Panel S., Vitori D & Close C. 202X The POLITICIZE Dataset: an inventory of Deliberative Mini-Publics (DMPs) in Europe. European Political Science.