DRAFT

Membership strategy

Recruiting and engaging public members in our work

March 2015–September 2016


Chapter / Title
/ Page
About Derbyshire Community Health Services / 3
Our membership community
  • What does it mean to be a member of DCHS?
  • Our membership community
  • Membership principles
  • Representing communities – public membership
  • Our public membership profile
  • Representing our workforce - staff membership
/ 4
Membership recruitment and engagement to date / 10
Membership targets from 2015 onwards
  • Recruiting new members
/ 11
Engaging existing members in the work of the Trust / 12
Member and governor communication and development
  • Governor to member communications:
  • DCHS to Governor Communications
  • Governor to Governor communications
  • Future governor involvement
  • Governor training
/ 14
Evaluating success / 19
Appendix 1 - Proposed recruitment activity 2015- 2016 / 20
Appendix 2 –Proposed communication and engagement activity 2015 - 2016
Appendix 3 –Proposed recommendations from Governor Communication Workshops / 21
23

1. About Derbyshire Community Health Services

Derbyshire Community Health Services NHS Foundation Trust (DCHS) is one of the largest providers of specialist community healthcare nationally, employing approximately 4,400 staff and with an annual income of more than £163 million. We deliver a variety of services across Derbyshire and in parts of Leicestershire, with nearly 1.5m patient contacts across all services each year.

We became a stand-alone legal entity as an NHS provider organisation back in 2011, separating from Derbyshire County Primary Care Trust. This change was in line with the coalition government’s reforms of the NHS in England.

We secured authorisation as a NHS Foundation Trust (FT) in November 2014. One of the biggest benefits of this is the greater local accountability we have – through ourcouncil of 30 Governors made up of our 27 public and staff members (following a democratic election process) and 3 further Governors from local partner organisations. This strategy is therefore an incredibly important strand in our commitment to much greater engagement in how we run and develop the Trust.

Monitor, the independent regulator of FTs, requires existing and aspirant NHS Foundation Trusts to develop a membership strategy which demonstrates how they will recruit and maintain a representative and engaged public membership from which a Council of Governors will be elected.

We now have 12,500 public members recruited from across our geographic area. There are also circa 4,400 staff members drawn from our workforce.

Going forward we aim to maintain our current levels of membership, focusing on the quality of engagement with our existing members. We also aim to improve the quality of information that we hold about the members on the database. We will however continue to recruit members where possible as we do lose members each year e.g. because they move away and we lose contact, or they become deceased.

Any active, targeted recruitment will focus on communities that are currently under represented in our current membership and this report outlines the planned actions we will take to engage and recruit our members further. It also examines the role Governors can play in assisting in membership recruitment and engagement to help us meet our aims and targets.

2.Our membership community

Our aim remains to maintain the largest practicable membership which reflects our local communities both in terms of geography and demographics. Our objective is to engage our membership in the work of DCHS, helping to shape services and to elect our Council of Governors.

We currently have 12,500 public members. Over the past 12 months we have held several events to improve engagement with our existing membership and recruit new members. As we are now focussed more on engagement, going forward our recruitment plan is to maintain our current level of membership, ensuring however that we ‘replace’ members that are lost because they move away, become deceased, or decide to opt out. A plan of recruitment activity is appended to this report (Appendix 1).

This strategy focuses on the recruitment and engagement of our public members. Staff membership engagement is managed through our existing internal processes and is captured through other organisational policies.

What does it mean to be a member of DCHS?

Public and staff members have a key role in the way DCHS is governed now and in the future, andthis is at the level they feel is appropriate. This means that they can:

  • Become involved in health service planning and consultation activity;
  • Stand for election as a Governor;
  • Vote in the election of the Council of Governors;
  • Become involved in our patient experience agenda;
  • Help promote healthy lifestyles;
  • Volunteer;
  • Learn more about local health services by attending dedicated member events;
  • Get the same discounts as NHS staff with high street brands and local businesses.

We aspire to:

  • Provide a range of opportunities for our members to get involved;
  • Maintain and gradually increase membership each year in line with our membership targets;
  • Have the most effective Foundation Trust membership scheme in England working with Membership Engagement Services.

We have incentivised membership to date by offering our members a discount card that can be used at high street brands and local businesses.

Our strategy for any future recruitment campaign will focus on the quality of the information that we are able to obtain from a new member; and establishing at the outset the level of engagement preferred by them. We wish to encouragemembers’ involvement in shaping local health services and our commitment to members is to contact them at an early stage of any service developments to enable them to actively inform the way forward.

Members of DCHS are drawn from the following groups of people:

  • Patients, public, partners and carers within the communities we serve;
  • Patients, public, partners and carers outside of our catchment areas and
  • DCHS staff.

Membership principles:

  • Membership is free;
  • Members can choose how much or how little they want to be involved;
  • All membership activity is voluntary but DCHS will cover necessary expenses when agreed in advance;
  • Membership does not mean preferential treatment or rights of access to staff or premises;
  • Membership builds upon existing service user and carer involvement;
  • Members should be brand ambassadors of DCHS;
  • Members attending any public events in a DCHS capacity will have appropriate support and be provided with briefings where necessary;
  • It is a member’s responsibility to let us know when their circumstances change.

The process of becoming a member is designed to be as simple as possible. The following ways are promoted to the public to encourage them to join the scheme:

  • Fill in a secure online form at:
  • Download a copy of our membership form and return it to our freepost address, callthe Membership Office on 01246 515224 or via email:

Representing communities – public members

To ensure members’ representation across our geographic area five constituenciesare established. Three of these constituencies are grouped due to their similar socio-economic profiles. These are: Amber Valley, Erewash & South Derbyshire; Chesterfield, North East Derbyshire & Bolsover; Derbyshire Dales and High Peak.

A fourth constituency isthe ‘City of Derby’ and the fifth features members from the ‘Rest of England’ to reflect service provision outside of the boundaries of Derbyshire.

In our Constitution we have allocated Governor seats to each constituency to reflect its size – please see Table 1 for the population sizes and number of Governors for each constituency.

Patients, public, partners and carers who reside in the areas we serve are therefore eligible to join one of five constituencies. An individual cannot be a member of more than one constituency and a person who satisfies the criteria for membership of a staff constituency cannot become or continue as a member of the public constituency.

Our five public constituencies are shown on the map below:

Table 1: Constituency population and Governor representation:

District / Population 2015 / Number of Governors
Amber Valley, Erewash & South Derbyshire / 334,932 / 6
Chesterfield, North East Derbyshire & Bolsover / 280,450 / 5
Derbyshire Dales & High Peak / 163,511 / 4
City of Derby / 254,563 / 1
Rest of England / - / 1

Our public membership profile

Overall, we have a broadly representative membership profile. Our database allows us to analyse in further detail the make-up of our membership and regular monitoring will help us to identify key targets for recruitment to allow a more focused effort on ensuring we are seeking under-represented groups to become members.

In terms of ethnicity our Indian, Pakistani and Chinese communities are slightly under-represented.We will continue to work with the Equality and Diversity team to seek to improve representation of these groups. Geographically the High Peak and Derbyshire Dales constituency has a slightly lower representation than the other constituencies.

Table 2 below (as at 1 September 2015) displays population and the number of public members per constituency. It also shows if the number of members is representative of the local population through an index ranking drawn from our database. An index ranking of between 80 and 120 is considered to be representative. From the table it is clear each constituency is represented proportionately although Derbyshire Dales and High Peak is at the lower end of the index at 90; we will monitor this index andwill take steps to address if it falls further with targeted recruitment in the area.

Table 2: Local membership and population distribution

Constituency / Constituency population / Public members per constituency / Constituency membership as a % of overall Membership / Index ranking
Amber Valley, Erewash & South Derbyshire / 334,932 / 3,304 / 32.41 / 104
Bolsover, Chesterfield & North East Derbyshire / 280,450 / 2,781 / 27.14 / 104
City of Derby / 254,562 / 2,349 / 24.63 / 97
Derbyshire Dales & High Peak / 163,511 / 1,402 / 15.82 / 90
Total / 1,033,456 / 9,836 / 100.00

Representing our workforce - staff membership

Staff membership is open to any member of staff who has a permanent contract of employment with the Trust, on an opt-out basis. In addition staff who are on a fixed term contract arrangementfor a year or longer, and all members of Bank Staff, are also eligible for membership.

Staff constituency classes are representative of the workforce ensuring each area of the Trust is fairly represented. The staff membership is divided into six constituencies:

  • Nursing
  • Medical and Dental
  • Other registered health professional (including therapists, healthcare scientists and other registered health professionals who are not in the categories above)
  • Healthcare support staff (including health care assistants and other non-registered support staff)
  • Administrative, clerical and managerial
  • Estates and facilities.

We have recently carried out an exercise confirming constituencies to be allocated to Staff Members in our membership database for the purpose of clarity. Recently during the Healthcare Support Staff election process, it was highlighted that a number of staff may be sitting in the wrong constituencies. For example, should the role of an Estates Manager be allocated to the Facilities and Estates group or to the Admin, Clerical and Manager group?

The occupational groups have now been reviewed and a final rationale has been proposed as a standard way of allocating constituency groups. The rationale for each occupational group will then be recorded so the Quality Business team has standard guidance to follow going forward.

The membership database for staff members is currently being updated to reflect these changes.

3. Membership recruitment and engagement to date

We had set year-on-year targets to grow and maintain a representative, engaged membership. In 2013 /14 over 50 recruitment events were staged in both the community, in our hospitals and health centres, along with a publicity programme in the local media, on the DCHS website and social media profiles.

We recognise that the focus to date has been about getting to a level of membership required as a foundation trust. We are now at a point of transition towards a strategy that aims to maintain our current levels of membership, whilst focusing on developing strategies that build meaningful engagement.

We also aim to improve the quality of information that we hold about the members on the database e.g. we do not hold email addresses for the majority of our members. This is the most cost effective way of communication with our members therefore we are currently campaigning to collect more email addresses for existing members.

We have also identified that we have a large number of potential ‘gone aways’ on our system and we have been working with our Database provider to update addresses for members.

In terms of quality of engagement, recently we have offered opportunities to members to attend several events including Open Days, Heart Start Training and the Access to Healthcare Forum. Allof these events were an opportunity for staff and Governors to engage with our members and also offered face to face recruitment opportunities.

Over the summer we held pilot Open Days at two of our sites Whitworth hospital and Ilkeston hospital. The two events were promoted widely to our members to come along and see what we do and to engage with us. The Whitworth event was run as an Open Day to view the refurbished hospital and view displays for services and was very successful attracting over 100 people of all ages. It also gave the Governors present an opportunity to engage with their constituents. The Ilkeston Open Day was held alongside the League of Friends Garden Party, which was attended by over 700 people and again was viewed as successfully engaging the community including existing members. We were also able to recruit new members at both events. The two events have given us a blue print to work to for future similar events at other sites.

We have also worked in partnership with East Midlands Ambulance Services to offer 2 hour life-saving skills courses to our members. Over 100 members signed up for the 7 courses that were arranged across Derbyshire throughoutJune and July. Members benefitted from learning new skills and left with a very positive view of both DCHS and EMAS. In addition as several non-members came along the sessions were an opportunity to sign up new members as well. The feedback we received was that the members would like similar sessions – perhaps on other topics – which they could attend. We could develop these sessions to give more Governors the opportunity to engage with their constituents.

Going forward we aim to:-

  • Develop the Facebook page for Members and encourage new users to use this as an effective two-way means of communication
  • Actively promote the monthly board meeting to members and the open question and answer session that precedes this as a means of involving our members inDCHS.
  • Develop targeted engagement activity based on constituency demographics and increase number of planned events for Governors – on a constituency basis – to attend to meet and engage with their constituents. This may be on a surgery type model. E.g.meetings at a community venue to raise the profile of the organisations work with its membership. Constituency Governors to attend each meeting supported by an officer. Meeting will focus on one main area of work as a special topic and a short presentation given.

Table 3: Key performance indicators

Area/Timescale / Key performance indicator / Latest results
Maintain Membership at / 12,500 members / 12,500
Staff Membership / 1% or less of staff opted out of the membership scheme / Achieved
Attendance of members at AGM / 120 members / Achieved
Return of Annual Survey / 10% return / Current survey ongoing

4. Membership targets in 2015 onwards

During the last two years we have concentrated on growing our membership. We now aspire to engage members more in our work and encourage involvement in shaping services from the outset of any changes and recruiting other members. We will do this by:

  • Providing a range of opportunities for our members to get involved through participation events, a programme of quality visits and invitations to focus groups and other consultations;
  • Improving our communications channels and establishing social media as a means of engaging members in the work of the Trust.

Recruiting new members

Recruitment target

Date / Public membership target
March 2015 / 12,500
March 2016 / Maintain at 12,500

Going forward we aim to maintain our current levels of membership, focusing instead on the quality of engagement with our existing members. For any targeted recruitment the plan is built on lessons learned from earlier recruitment rounds and focuses on attempts to recruit under-represented groups. Also service users will be specifically targeted to ensure we capture those whose experience of our services can be invaluable in any future development.

More details of the engagement and recruitment action plan are included in Appendix 1 with activity led by the Marketing and Communications team and supported by other departments as appropriate.

Issues for consideration

Does the Council of Governors agree this approach to membership recruitment?

Does the Council of Governors agree that the action plan outlines the best set of actions? (Appendix 1)

5. Engaging existing members in the work of the Trust

It is essential that DCHS establishes appropriate and meaningful two-way conversations with its members that go beyond broadcasting information and seek to actively engage those members who want to be involved in shaping the future of the Trust.

Our communication with members will be in line with our organisational values and based on the NHS communication standards:open and honest; efficient; integrated; credible; planned; clear; targeted; two-way; timely; consistent.

Having successfully recruited to a large and broadly representative body of public members, we are now concentrating on how we can better engage and promote an open dialogue with our membership. Our commitment to making this a reality includes:

  • Continuing to seek the views of members on the type of information they would like and how they would like to receive it;
  • Ensuring that all membership activity is cost effective, including the management cost of running a membership function;
  • Ensuring that our membership communications make the best use of social media and online communications where appropriate, reducing costs and environmental impacts of printed materials while maintaining our commitment to providing accessible information in other accessible formats where required;
  • Continuing to encourage members to share their views on service changes and developments such as changes to operating hours for example;
  • Continuing with the programme of educational sessions for our members on popular health-related topics (chosen by the members);
  • Regularly contacting members about health events in their area;
  • Robustly promoting any impending election process to all relevant members, encouraging them to either stand or proactively vote;
  • Working with the Patient Experience Team to encourage members to become volunteers;
  • Evaluate all communications and engagement for impact and effectiveness and only use the most cost effective methods of attracting and engaging our membership.

Public membership falls within the remit of the Marketing and Communications team. Any requests from services or individual members of staff who are seeking membership involvement in any aspects of their service development should contact the team at: in order for the Head of Communications to decide on the appropriateness of their involvement.