Welcome to the Derbyshire LINK blogs

January – February 2010

This will be my last report as Derbyshire LINk manager as I have formally handed my notice in to the host organisations and will be taking up a new post within Derbyshire County Council Adult Care team. My last official day in post will be the 26th February but due to leave and toil owing my last office day will be the 19th February.

I leave with the knowledge that Derbyshire LINk is in a position of strength and well placed to move forward. I think we have come an awful long way during our first two years and that I have delivered a strong and well structured LINk from a blank canvas. It gives me immense pride to know that this project is respected not only at the local level but also at the regional and even nationally, this is only due to the hard work invested by myself, my staff, the LINk members and hosts.

I would like to wish Derbyshire LINk every success in the future and I think that with a strong Steering Group now in place and the excellent staff team to back them up it has every chance to do so. I would just caution that this LINk needs to be nurtured and supported in the correct way by the host organisations and that the support they offer to Derbyshire LINk should be just that, support. Derbyshire LINk is a top performer nationally and it would be sad to see the formula that created this success diluted in any way, strong leadership is required from both the Steering Group and my successor and I hope that this is enabled and supported to help bring further achievements and recognition to Derbyshire LINk, its members and all the people of Derbyshire.

I shall miss all the wonderful people I have met during my time greatly and I send to you all my thanks and best wishes for the future.

Members

We currently have 479 individual members on our database and 149 Groups who represent 13,763 members or service users.

This gives us a potential reach to a network of 14,242 individuals.

Website

Here are the latest statistics for the website:

October 2009 saw 18,327 hits.

November 2009 saw 18,556 hits.

December 2009 saw 24,409 hits.

January 2010 saw 28,618 hits.

Radio Advertising Campaign Update

The advertising campaigns are both well under-way on Ram FM and Peak FM and we have certainly seen an uplift in website enquiries over this period.

In the Peak FM area the Peak Action element of the campaign has also begun and will continue over the month of February with a different theme highlighted each week, the four themes picked to reflect a younger person health and social care experiences are ‘carers’, ‘physical disabilities’, ‘GP’s’, and ‘sexual health and family planning’. A big thank you to the LINk staff and the external expert partners for feeding back to me interesting comments and experiences that I have been able to use in the scripts.

The Ram FM thunder crew activity has also commenced and the first event took place at Chesterfield College and was the most amazing success, in two hours we signed up 84 new members and all under 25 years old. There will be 11 more of these events taking place across the city and county in the next two months and if the first one is anything to go by then we can expect a massive membership increase and a real success in tapping into this until now hard to reach demographic.

All in all I think we can already regard this campaign that I proposed and created alongside Derby City LINk a fantastic success!

CQC Event

We organised, publicized and facilitated an event at Wind Wheel in Chesterfield on behalf of the Care Quality Commission (CQC). This was an open public forum linked to the inspection work the CQC carried out around Derbyshire County Council Adult Care Services. The event was a great success with 44 members of the public in attendance. The CQC panel members had high praise for the LINk organisation of this event and commented that this was the best attended event they have had so far in this round of inspections nationally.

Steering Group

The election of the Steering Group Chair has been published and we will continue to see David Briggs in this role, well done David.

Therefore, David is Chair and his vice Chairs will be Christine Price and Shirley Flint.

The revised Terms of Reference have now been agreed and have been published.

A Steering Group letter to PCT regarding an issue about pharmacy provision in West Hallam has been sent to Pam Purdue, this letter is just to formally note Derbyshire LINk’s interest in any outcome.

The next Steering Group meeting will take place on the 17th February 2010.

Database Upgrade

The Database upgrade has been agreed and Bernie Hempell will begin work onsite commencing 10th February and should be completed by March 2010.

Arts Engagement Work

The filming element is coming to an end and will be completed by end of February. The editing will then take place and the films are still on course to be delivered to us by the end of March.

The second invoice has been received and the final invoice is expected no later than 10th March 2010.

Sub Contracting Work

I have compiled a list from the feedback of LINk staff of the subcontracting work we have had involvement in, but there are some gaps which need to be filled.

Member Contact Update

CQC Open Public Forum publicity mail out

Carers Association Poster e-mail to members

Derbyshire Forum for People with Hearing and Visual Impairments e-mail to members

NHS Car Parking Consultation – improving access for patients.

3 x Consultations regarding Specialist Treatment Centres

Consultation regarding Cardiac Rehabilitation

Volunteers Update

Cardiac User Group – LINk Champion

Amber Valley Health Forum – LINk Champion

Health and Wellbeing – LINk Champion

Health and Wellbeing LINk Champion Request sent

Ashbourne Consultation Request sent

Volunteering Interview

Various LINk Champion Feedback Forms sent out

Care Home Work

Phase one reflection report now available.

All the very best, Nick Whitehead.

Members

We currently have 365 individual members on our database and 135 Groups who represent 12,889 members or service users.

This gives us a potential reach to a network of 13,254 individuals.

Website

Here are the latest statistics for the website:

September 2009 saw 25,334 hits
October 2009 saw 18,327 hits.
November 2009 saw 18,556 hits.
December 2009 saw 24,409 hits.

Radio Advertising Campaign Update

Everything is on schedule for the Radio campaigns to start their on air campaigns from the 11th of January in the RAM FM and a week later in the Peak FM area.

The scripts have been signed off by both Derby and Derbyshire LINk and the young actress from Channel 4's Shameless Rebecca Ryan recorded the adverts on 15th December.

The other elements of the campaign have been agreed and we shall be confirming the dates and venues of the direct marketing work in the New Year.

The four themes chosen for the Peak Action slots in February are Young Carers, GP Access, Family Planning, and Living with Physical Disability. We are seeking advice and input from local leaders in these fields as well as our own experiences gathered through our work.

Big Care Debates

Just to confirm that all comments and views from the debates we ran in October/November have been compiled and submitted to the Big Care Debate Team at the Department of Health and they will keep up to date on developments and outcomes of the overall consultation.

The feedback we have received from the LINk members who attended these events has been extremely positive and they would like to see us running more of these types of events on different issues.

Steering Group

The first formal meeting took place on the 9th December of the elected Derbyshire LINk Steering Group. It was a positive and insightful meeting and, if first impressions are anything to go by, we should expect a much more active and involved Steering Group directing our future work.

The election of the Chair and Vice Chairs has been delayed to the next meeting in January to enable a ballot of potential candidates to take place. The candidates for Chair will be David Briggs (the current Chair) and John Floyd.
The Vice Chairs will be Christine Price and David Briggs or John Floyd.

The Issues Sub-Group also reported back to the Steering Group for the first time and made recommendations that three working parties be created to look at the following issues in more detail:

Hospital Discharge Process
Community Services
GP Access

The working parties will meet every six weeks for the next 4 months and then report back to the Sub Group and onto the main Steering Group.

The next Steering Group meeting will take place on the 20th January 2010.

Arts Engagement Work

The Arts engagement work that is being led by High Peak Arts on our behalf has commenced and several sessions have already taken place in locations across Derbyshire and with a variety of audiences.

I recently attended a session in Chapel en le Firth and found it to be absolutely fascinating and relevant to the work we do here at Derbyshire LINk. The group were made up of people suffering from varying mental health and end of life issues. I was able to respond to the group's questions and I hope I was able to provide some clarity for them about the work we do and the ways that we value the issues we receive. The session revolved around how to create a strong and powerful voice that can be heard by decision makers and this fits in with how we want the LINk to be perceived.

This engagement led work will continue into January with filming taking place at these sessions. This then leads onto High Peak Arts pulling this material into a series of films for us, with the final delivery of the project due in early March 2010.

Sub Contracting Work

The response thus far from the sub contracted partners has been mixed and I shall be looking to make this a priority when I return from my Christmas leave. All partners whose details that have been passed to me have been assigned a LINk liaison from the staff team but this only seems to be about a third of the prospective partners.

DCIL, Derbyshire Friend, Gypsy/Travellers Liaison Service and County Learning Disability Partnership are the partners with 1st stage work completed or due to take place shortly. The feedback from other partners has been limited at best and therefore I am unaware of their plans or potential dates for future LINk focus events.

Due to the patchwork nature of this particular work it has been difficult to understand what arrangements and undertakings have been given and thus I will do some focused work with all partners and the LINk staff team throughout January. We should then have a much clearer understanding of the plans and outcomes that we require for this work.

CQC Joint Working

We have received a request from CQC and DCC to arrange and facilitate an open forum on the 28th January 2010 to help give the public and LINk members a chance to feed directly into the CQC assessment of Adult Care service provision across Derbyshire. I was happy to agree to take this on, given our recent experience of running the Big Care Debates, and the requests from our members to see more such events in the future. I agreed on the condition that all costs for the event are picked up by DCC and CQC, including venue, lunch and transport.

We are currently looking for a suitable venue but due to the short notice this will most likely be a Chesterfield based event.

National Feedback

I recently had a phone call from the manager at the Milton Keynes LINk asking for information about the Care Home work we have been conducting, which I was happy to speak to her about and send her some information. I asked how she had come across our work and she stated that it had been raised in her regional LINk meeting as an example of good practice in LINk working. I feel this is something that the whole LINk team can feel extremely proud of.

We have also had a request from Northamptonshire LINk for us to show how we record issues and developed our databases. At some point in the New Year myself and Tammi will visit them to pass on whatever help we can.

I have been asked to attend a meeting in Staffordshire to talk about our work and structure as an example of good LINk practice. This follows on from the host for that LINk area having its contract withdrawn in December 2009.

I have also provided an overview of our LINk governance and the team structure to Tony Richardson at Suffolk County Council, as we had been recommended to him as an example of excellence by Norfolk LINk and his regional co-ordinator from the Department of Health.

I was invited and will be attending a meeting of national LINk representatives at Birmingham University on the 26th February to give a presentation of the progress we have made so far and my vision for the future role of all LINks over the next few years and beyond.

Care Home Work

Phase one of the Care Home work is now complete and the interim report is currently in development and should be available by the end of January. We have agreed that both myself and John Morris will attend the Overview and Scrutiny Committee at DCC in March to give a talk on this report and we shall follow this with a similar presentation to the Stakeholder event later in the same month.

Phase two of the Care Home Work will fully commence in the New Year and will focus on the service users, family members and carers. It will also be selective in terms of the Care Homes that we visit, we will look to identify good and bad practice throughout each district and start to look at the themes that come from this engagement.

Members

We currently have 326 individual members on our database and 138 Groups who represent 12,174 members or service users.

This gives us a potential reach to a network of 12,500 individuals.

Chesterfield & District Shopmobility have joined us as a group member and as they have over 7,000 members this has massively expanded our potential reach which is really good news.

Website

The LINk website shows good usage statistics and we are still seeing a mix of new and return users' month on month.

Here are the latest statistics for the website:

August 2009 saw 21,160 hits

September 2009 saw 25,334 hits

October 2009 saw 18,327 hits.

Radio Advertising Campaign Update

RAM FM

I have completed the negotiations on behalf of Derby City LINk and ourselves for the joint campaign that we will be running on RAM FM in January.

We have dropped the Vodcast element of the proposal as we could not see how this would fit into the work that both LINk's do and how it could add value to the campaign. We therefore agreed to extend the 'Thunder Crew' element of the proposal as we concurred that this sort of direct marketing would bring added benefits to both LINks and help bring more focused targeting of our desired audience. Therefore we shall be running 12 x 2 hour events across the county over the period of the campaign.

We have managed to secure the prime Breakfast Show sponsorship slot, this offers us a higher profile and rate of listeners in our target demographic as well as a wider audience. Due to the changes in the above elements I was left with some flexibility in the budget to look to negotiate more value on the final sponsorship deal, rather than seeking to attain this through lower cost settlement as the agreed need is to be delivering spend on year 2 budget, I looked to add value through an extension on the campaign length. I was successful in my talks with RAM FM to realise a campaign run of 12 weeks over the originally quoted 8 weeks. Therefore the campaign will now run from 11th January to 11th April 2010, the campaign will still be invoiced within this fiscal year and therefore has no consequence on Year 3 budget.

We are currently in discussions to agree an invoicing process.

Agreed costs with RAM FM for this campaign will be £12,500 in total. Derby LINk will pay £5,000 and we shall pick up the remaining cost of £7,500. VAT charges on our share of the costs remain within our agreed overall costs for this proposal.

Peak FM

I have also concluded a deal with Peak FM to run an advertising campaign concurrently with the RAM FM campaign.

This deal also included the opportunity to become the main sponsor of the Peak FM Local Hero Awards, a general 12 week advertising campaign and a Derbyshire LINk special focused issues month which is due to run over the four weeks of February.

The price agreed was £6,350 including VAT and this has already been invoiced to us.

Local Hero Awards

As part of the Peak FM deal we became the main sponsor of the Local Hero Awards, due to the timing of the deal the turnaround to meet the awards deadline was very tight. I agreed the deal on Monday 19th October and the awards show was on the evening of Friday 23rd October.

The sponsorship meant that the Derbyshire LINk name and brand would be associated with all elements of the awards, including on air promotions, all printed material, on the night promotions and the additional benefits of sponsorship association through external media sources. We also received as part of the package, the main sponsors table at the awards show, with up to eight seats.

Most of the arrangements were the responsibility of Peak FM and their staff but we had to make sure that we were able to deliver the required material, such as high resolution logos and LINk branding. We also had to put together LINk information packs, and Sharon did a sterling job putting together over one hundred comprehensive packs and having them all ready to be delivered for first thing Friday morning.

Due to the short notice we were only able to fill 6 of our 8 allotted places but I felt this was quite a good showing under the circumstances. We had representatives from both hosts and the LINk staff team.

As the main sponsor I had to deliver the opening speech to the evening and this was quite a nerve racking experience in front of a full audience but I think I delivered an appropriated and well received address, although my colleagues in attendance would no doubt offer a better view on this.

We also presented the award for Volunteer of the Year and Catherine Clarke did those honours on behalf of Derbyshire LINk, this was quite apt considering Catherine's job role.
The evening itself was an excellent affair with good food and drink and high quality live music. But the most important part of the night was the heartfelt and inspirational stories of normal people who have acted in extraordinary ways, all had truly deserved to be celebrated and regarded as Local Heroes.

Big Care Debates

We have now completed the three Big Care debates on the Future of Care Green Paper and all had good attendances and generated excellent debate on the full range of issues.

Debbie Race was the main presenter at all events and she did an excellent job in breaking down the green paper and generating conversation and debate. I would like to thank her personally for the great work she did and the fact that she agreed to take on this role at all events even though one clashed with her birthday. I would also like to thank the LINk staff who did great work in helping set up on the event days and act as facilitators on the discussion tables. Also, special thanks have to go to Sharon for the tireless and thorough work she did in the planning and arrangements for each event.
The first event was the group focused event led by NDVA as part of their AGM and had around 50 group representative taking part.

The second event was a public event aims at the south of the county and held at Derby College Enterprise Park, we had around 25 people in attendance.

The final event was also a public event but aimed more to the north of the county and held at the Imperial Rooms in Matlock, we had around 50 people in attendance.

All views and feedback from all events is currently being collated and I will be submitting this to the appropriate government department before the 15th November.

Steering Group

The first meeting of the new Steering Group is taking place on the 10th November at the New Bath Hotel, as agreed at previous Steering Group meeting it is planned to be an informal meet and greet affair.

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August/September 2009

Members

We currently have 267 individual members on our database and 79 Groups who represent 2,951 members or service users.

This gives us a potential reach to a network of 3,218 individuals.

Website

I am still extremely pleased with the performance of the website and we are still seeing lots of site traffic even at this traditionally quiet time due to summer holidays.
Due to leave and workloads we have not had chance to refresh the website content as much as we would have wished over the last month but we are aware of this and this will be a priority over the next month and beyond.
We are currently running a poll on our website to give our members the chance to choose a name for the LINk Bulletin, we currently have over thirty votes and this will continue until the 1st September. The results will be officially announced in the next issue of the bulletin.

Here are the latest statistics for the website:

June 2009 saw 29,155 hits
July 2009 saw 22,923 hits
August (as of 11th) 11,662 hits

Care Home Work

Our Care Home work continues apace and we are still finding the process very fruitful. To give you a flavour of the first phase of our work, here is a general overview of some the information and issues we have received:

Total number of homes visited/visits arranged: 116 out of 195.

From these visits we have collated onto our issues database 191 issues. This does not yet include suggestions or examples of good practices.
Of those 191 issues inputted into our system thus far 65% of issues fall into the following five categories:

• Hospitals = 45
• GPs = 27
• Adult Social Service (Adult Care) = 20
• Dentistry = 17
• Derbyshire Primary Care Trust = 15

The most common issues from the comments received are:

• Hospitals - Discharge processes.
• GPs - Availability of appointments, GPs doing home visits, usual issues to do with staff.
• Adult Social Services - Number of staff available in care homes, activities, trips, exchange of information.
• Dentistry - Obtaining dentist services, either in homes or accessing outside of care homes. Accessing outside also causing staffing related problems.
• PCT - District Nurses and continence services.

As we move into phase two I will be asking John Morris and the rest of the team to contribute to an interim report and once complete I will make this available to interested and relevant parties.

Derbyshire County Council ARM Review

On Wednesday 15th July I took part in the Care Quality Commission (CQC) Annual Review Meeting of Derbyshire County Council (DCC) Adult Social Services. I attended for the whole day and found it to be an interesting and informative process, while also giving me an excellent overview of some of the council's work that has taken place over the past year and people who this has directly affected.
My part in the formal part of the process was to comment on joint working that has taken place between Adult Social Services (now Adult Care) department and Derbyshire LINk.
I spoke about the following joint working:

• Health and Wellbeing Partnership Board
• Health and Wellbeing Partnership Summit
• Joint Strategic Needs Assessment Board
• Carers Joint Commissioning Group
• Making Care Personal - Stakeholder Engagement Board
• Making Care Personal - Information, Advice and Advocacy

As I was short on time I was unable to talk in detail about the more local work that we do with local social care offices and services but I was able to demonstrate to CQC not only DCC's commitment to the LINk but also the excellent and productive work that the LINk is involved in at all levels of health and social care across Derbyshire.
I have received positive feedback on my input into this process and have received a written thank you from Bill Robinson.

Steering Group

The first ‘Issues Sub Group' meeting took place on the 6th August led by Tammi and this looked at some of the following:

• How this group will make its recommendations to the main Steering Group
• How to use the resources at their disposal - such as: Issues Database, Scoring System, Staff, etc
• Procedures for agreeing issue recommendations
• Looking at real issues and making some initial recommendations for the next SG meeting

I look forward to seeing what this has produced for the up coming Steering Group meeting and how this Sub Group evolves over the coming months.

We are currently progressing the Steering Group elections with Electoral Reform Society (ERS). We have now been assigned a Project Manager by ERS and Tammi is coordinating with this person to ensure that they have all the correct documents, information and deadlines.
We have completed the appropriate paperwork and have finalised the letter that will be sent to all of our members regarding the election process and the call for nominations; this will be sent out by ERS on our behalf shortly. This letter was signed off by David Briggs our Steering Group Chair.

The next Steering Group meeting will be taking place on 18th August 2009.

June/July 2009

Members

We currently have 245 individual members on our database and 44 Groups who represent 1,642 members or service users.

This gives us a potential reach to a network of 1,887 individuals.

Website

The website continues to perform well and we continue to receive excellent feedback from users and partner organisations.

We have now published the LINk Annual Report on the site for the wider public to read and the new issue of the bulletin is also available.

The site is updated several times a week and we are currently expanding some of the sections of the web site to accommodate more information. Catherine is expanding the volunteering section to enable opportunities to be detailed and advertised and we are currently looking at how we expand the LINk work feedback section.

Here are statistics for the website:

May 2009 saw 41,569 hits

June 2009 saw 29,155 hits

July 2009 (As of the 16^th) 17,892 hits

Annual Report

After over a month’s hard work and four drafts I finally completed the LINk annual report for year 1 and it was submitted to the Department of Health and other relevant partner organisations on time and to schedule. It has also been e-mailed to LINk members and is available on this website for everyone to read and comment on.

The feedback already received has been excellent and very pleasing from a personal point of view.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all who provided feedback and suggestions during the draft stage, too many to name here but your input was appreciated.

Bulletin

Issue 2 of the LINk bulletin has now been produced and printed. We have e-mailed and posted out to members, although this was slightly delayed because of staff illness but with the help of the whole team we have minimised this delay. We are now in the process of shipping out to the other contacts on our distribution list, such as libraries, GP surgeries, and so on.

As part of this quarters issue we are running a poll to help us choose a permanent name, the poll is accessible through the poll section on the website and we should have an official name by the beginning of September. Here is a link straight to it http://www.derbyshirelink.org.uk/index.php?option=com_pollxt&Itemid=53

I would like to mention the hard work that Catherine Clarke has put into producing and editing the bulletin, she really has pulled out all the stops and created an excellent and informative read for our members.

In the future months we will be working to bring volunteers on board to be part of the bulletin creation team.

Care Home Work

The Care Home work continues apace, we are now coming to the end of this first engagement phase were we have been talking and building relationships with managers and owners. The feed back we have received has been quite surprising, we had not anticipated being so warmly welcomed by the majority of homes and neither had we expected to see the amount of issues that have been fed through to us at this high level of operations. We have had a particularly good response from the privately run homes, who genuinely seem pleased that they have somebody to discuss the issues they and their service users face.

Over the next month we will begin to start the next phase of the process by engaging and talking to the services users and their families/carers. It will be very interesting to see the sort of issues that will be raised during the course of this work.  The issues raised up until now have all centred on the accessing of auxiliary services such as GP’s, Dental, etc. Through talking to services users it will be interesting to see what issues are raised about their living environment.

Another interesting aspect of this work is how other organisations and users groups want to input into the work we are doing here, we will shortly be looking at how we deal with these requests and how it might give additional focus to our work.

Derbyshire County Council ARM Review

On Wednesday 15^th July I will be taking part in the Care Quality Commission Annual Review Meeting of Derbyshire County Council Social Services. I have been asked as Derbyshire LINk manager to be part of the whole day to be able to feed into this process, looking at how LINk has been working with DCC on commissioning processes and consultations, such as the Health and Wellbeing Partnership. I will also have the opportunity to give an overview of LINk first year progress.

I should be able to provide more details on this in my next report.

Steering Group

The Steering Group away day took place on the 12^th June and has provided some interesting outcomes and priorities for the Group and the LINk as a whole. The group noted that the day had helped to clarify the role of the Group while also giving them a better understanding of operational procedures and the function of the Host. Minutes from this away day are available on request.

The Steering Group meeting also had their main meeting on the 7^th July and we had three potential new members for this group in attendance thus making this the best attended meeting held to date.

Two of the main items of note to come from this meeting were the decisions to authorise the use of the Electoral Reform Society to conduct the upcoming LINk election and the group also agreed to create a Sub Committee to look solely at issue prioritisation.

The next meeting will take place on 18^th August 2009.

May / June 2009

Members

We currently have 228 individual members on our database and we have seen quite a few additions from our Care Home work this month.

With our group membership form and database now live we have already recruited 13 Groups who represent 555 members. This is an extremely positive start to our group recruitment and has already massively expanded LINk’s reach across the county.

Website

The website continues to perform well and we have had some excellent feedback on the site from our users.

The web team meet at least once a month to help co-ordinate the adding of content and stories to the site. We look for these stories from within the LINk team, Steering Group, LINk members, and the wider media across Derbyshire and the country.

Here are statistics for the website:

April 2009 saw 45,153 hits

May 2009 saw 41,569 hits

June 2009 has seen 29,153 hits

Annual Report

An awful lot of my time over the last few weeks has been dedicated to the writing of the Derbyshire LINk Annual Report, the first draft was completed to schedule and I have received a whole host of comments (all extremely positive), suggestions and ideas for the second draft. I will be collating and rationalising all of this input and I expect to have the final version completed on time.

Care Home Work

Our single biggest piece of development and engagement work is taking place in care homes across the county. We are currently at the building relationships phase which involves the locality development workers contacting and then meeting managers and owners of care homes. This has been going really well, with some excellent and surprising feedback coming back to us even at this stage.

The next part of this work will involve meeting with service users of care homes to discuss with them all of the different services they use and the ones they are unable to.

The feedback from the LINk staff has also been very positive and they all seem to be enjoying this process. I asked John Morris to be the Development Worker lead for this work and he has performed exceptionally in this role.

Adverts

Advert in Chesterfield Good Access Guide – This advert has been created based on the adverts we ran in the main press and it will run in this guide from September.

Advert in Communicasian – This advert has also been created and is again based on one of our main adverts. I have passed the artwork to Jas and she will be liaising with this publication. No word on publication date at this stage.

Advert on Derbyshire Cricket Club Website – The online advert has been created and agreed. The advert is already live on the fixtures page of the County Cricket website and we have already seen some click through activity from this source.

Consultations and Meetings     

I was recently asked to become involved with the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) process taking place between the County Council and the PCT. I attended my first board meeting last week and discussed how LINk can be involved with and input into this process. I agreed that LINk could consult its members on any planning questions for health and social care issues. We would also look to see how we can share anonymised data on issues from the LINk issues database to help give focus to the JSNA priorities.

Here is a brief overview of the JSNA:

“Derbyshire’s Joint Strategic Needs Assessment 2008-13 contains the main issues identified by the data gathering and analysis and the results of the various consultations with Derbyshire people.

We already know what some of these issues are but new ones will emerge as we receive feedback and additional data through the JSNA continuous process.

Although the JSNA is a national initiative, it is very much about uncovering the issues that adversely affect the wellbeing of life for the people of Derbyshire.

The acid test of the success of our JSNA, is the impact the arising knowledge has on the way that services are subsequently commissioned and provided.

As our JSNA develops, we will undertake regular checks to ensure that improvements are being made to the way that services are constructed and delivered.

Our JSNA is designed to be the driver for making improvements to the lives of Derbyshire people by addressing the priority issues that it identifies. The resulting actions should be part of Derbyshire’s Sustainable Community Strategy and the Local Area Agreement (LAA).”

Steering Group

The Steering Group away day took place on the 12^th June and has produced some interesting outcomes and priorities for the Group and the LINk as a whole. We will look to publish the minutes from this event on the web site in the near future.

At the last meeting the Steering Group agreed to an election process and the LINk support team are now researching and formulising this into the timetable for implementation.

The next meeting will take place on the 7^th July.

Hi All

Just thought I would give you a little update on what has been happening over the last six weeks or so.

Members/Volunteers
We have now surpassed 200 members/volunteers and this grows every month. We have also created a welcome pack for all new members, this followed on from an idea from the Steering Group and we were quickly able to put this excellent idea into practice.
We are also currently drawing up some documentation for group membership of the LINk as it was agreed at the LINk away day that we should be bringing groups on board in a more official and complementary way.

Adverts
We are now come to the end of our advertising campaign, I will be receiving the press clipping from all of the publications we have appeared in from the Ad agency. Shaun from the ad agency will let me know a date when we can expect to receive this.
The adverts are available to view on our website.

Some of the outcomes of the ad campaign have been:
• Increased awareness of LINk and it's branding across the county
• Around a 40% up lift in people e-mailing for more information on the LINk
• Around about 150% increased in phone traffic over the last five weeks
• A marked increase in the amount of people interested in working with the LINk - Both from individuals and Groups
• A lot of enquiries from other publications wanting us to advertise with them.
• A membership increase over the last five weeks of 30 members which is a single biggest period increase since the initial start up period last May. This is indirect evidence of the ad campaigns success.

Transport Issues
Since we started to recorded issues on to our database one of the main topics which has been fed to us right across the county is transport. So far all of these issues on this subject have been single issues that apart from signposting we do not need to deal with, but I was concerned that if we start to see trends on any particular transport issues we would not be in a position to effectively deal with it.
I have therefore been for some time trying to build a communication pathway between the LINk and DCC transport department. I am glad to say that my perseverance has paid off and I have now met with top level managers within this department and have agreed with them a two way process for us to share and report on issues on transport picked up by the LINk.
Transport has always been a tricky subject for us as it is not directly a Health or Social Care issue but it does affect the public's ability to access these services and thus I thought it was right and proper to pursue this.

Consultations
Just a quick note to mention that we have seen, since the turn of the year, the amount of consultations and committees requests for LINk involvement increase ten fold. As this LINk has grown stronger and better known, our strategic partners now see the clear benefit of our involvement in these processes.
We also have a very engaged ‘membership' who want the chance to be involved in these processes. The recent Health and Wellbeing Summit is a good case in point, we were asked if we could provide four reps to this meeting and we had a massive response from our membership to play a part. On the back of this response I was able to have James Mathews at DCC to increase our allocation to nine places and we therefore sent a LINk delegation to this summit supported by Catherine Clarke, our Volunteer Development Worker.
As we provide reps for more meetings we will be recording this in a LINk consultation document and this will link in directly with the excellent work Catherine is doing for me creating a LINk Champion role.

Steering Group
At the Steering Groups request we now have guest speakers to meeting, so far we have had Keith Mann from the PCT to talk about dentistry improvements and Jackie Calladine to talk about prescription changes, both talks were extremely useful and well received.
We currently are meeting every six weeks and this seems to be satisfactory at this present time.
We currently have eleven registered Steering Group members and usually have 50 to 60% attendance.
The election process has still not been agreed but the group have agreed to set up a sub committee to resolve this and set workable deadlines. I will be arranging the first meeting for this sub group and the hope is that we will have firm recommendations for the Steering Group to agree and sign off at the next meeting.
The Work Plan document has been agreed and signed off by the group. It is spreadsheet based and consists of three worksheets: priorities, research and work and meeting register. This document is active and the meeting register section starts from this month.
At the away day the Steering Group stated they would like to start having issue reports and Development Worker Summaries, both of these are now available and systems are in place to ensure they are available at every Steering Group meeting.
The other request the Steering Group made at the away day was to have a new away day for Steering Group members only, they have set a deadline to achieve this within the next two months.
A request has also been made at the last Steering Group meeting that we should be looking to put on an annual event for all LINk members, a bit like an AGM but it is undecided if this should be a cross county single event or several locality based events. My own view based on our launch events experience is that this should be a single large scale event.

Annual Health Check
Here is a quick overview on our part in the Healthcare Commission (now known as the Care Quality Commission ((CQC)), Annual Health Check on the different parts of the NHS, We succeeded in making our full declarations well ahead of all deadlines. This is a real achievement as the majority of LINks felt they were not in a position to do this at all, we not only gave this input but this was backed up by a questionnaire sent to our members. We were completely blown away by the response to this piece of work with over 75% of participants responding, well over the average for what an organisation can normally expect for this type of engagement.

I hope that gives you a taste of some of the things we have been up to over March/April.

I thought I'd start my first blog here by introduing myself.

My name is Jaime. I'm 29 and I live in Duffield in Derbyshire. I've been volunteering with various organisations including Derbyshire Coalition for Inclusive Living (DCIL) in Ripley where I'm an IT Mentor.

I'm into computers and computer games. My favourites are the Command and Conquer series especially Command and Conquer Generals Zero Hour. And if you think the main missions are hard, try the Generals Challenge. Another favourite is simulators. I've played the EuroTruck simulator which involves driving a HGV around Europe as well as various Train Simulators and Ship Simulator 2008 with New Horizons add-on.

I'm also playing Mole Hill Empire on the internet, growing various vegetables and flowers. It's a good game for anyone who likes the idea of gardening but doesn't like the idea of all the mess.

I'm also a seasoned traveller, having travelled to Caephilly in Wales, Chingford in Essex, Dartmouth, Newcastle, Sunderland, Durham, Albrighton, Stroud,  Canterbury, York, Scotch Corner, Loughborough amongst others.

I also enjoy murder mysteries and I've been on a few. I'm also an avid reader, enjoying books by Agatha Christie, Dan Brown, Tom Clancy, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Welcome to the Derbyshire LINk  (Local Involvement Network) website, we are now fully up and running and hoping that this site will become a valuable resource to everyone in Derbyshire. This is a place we would like everyone to use to be able to share thoughts, experience and ideas on health and social care issues. We also want this to be a site for people to come together and hopeful have some fun and make new friends.

To get the most out of this site I would very much encourage you all to register you details with us. This not only will give you full access to all the features on the website but also enables you to write blogs like this one, take part in discussions on our forums and allows you to create a personal profile that you can share with others. Another benefit of signing up is that you will receive a copy of our Newsletter to your door every quarter at no cost.

You will also be able to interact with the LINk team and feed issues directly in to us so that we can log this data in to our databases. For us to improve your health and social care services we need to hear from you, good and bad.

I will be aiming to update this blog as regularly as possible to give you an overview of how this LINk is working, what issues we are looking into, what outcomes we have achieved, volunteering opportunities and the work our Steering Group are doing on your behalf. So keep coming back and I look forward to seeing you online.

Thanks, Nick