About this resource

Groups, smart groups and tags are all different ways of managing your data on the CiviCRM.

You might want to use these functions to help you keep track of things such as:

• Your volunteers
• Staff members
• Key stakeholders
• Mailing lists

This resource talks through the differences between groups, smart groups and tags, and explains ways to use them to help you use your CRM efficiently.

About this resource

The CiviCRM is a great way for you to store and manage data. To help you use your data and understand what information is on your CRM, there are a range of different ways that you can search for information, whether this is a contact or an activity.

This resource aims to help you better understand the different ways that you can search for and export data using the CiviCRM.

About this resource

The CRM allows you to represent connections between contacts by creating relationships. For example:

• If a mother and son are both in your database, it can be useful to be able to look at either record and see that they are related to each other.
• If you have a key contact who works at your local council, it would be useful to know that the relationship between the individual and the organisation.

This resource explains how to create relationships on the CRM to help make the data on your CRM as useful as possible.

About this resource

If you have more than one contact or activity to upload to your CRM, you do not need to do this one at a time.

There will often be occasions where you will want to multiple contacts or activities at the same time. For example, if you have a new group of volunteers joining your team, or you are just getting started with your CRM.

This resource talks you through how to prepare your data, and import contacts or activities in bulk, helping to reduce the amount of time you need to spend uploading information to your CRM.

People’s stories are at the heart of everything we do. We help make change happen by gathering people’s experiences and sharing them with those with the power to improve health and social care.

To draw people into our work, we need to share compelling stories. Follow these steps to help you do that.

Gather the facts

Before you start writing, gather the facts. Think about your story in terms of:

• Who? – Who is involved? Who is affected? Who will benefit?
• What? – What is the issue? What change or effect might occur as a result?
• When? – When will or did the story take place?
• Where?  – Where did this happen? Where do people live who are affected?
• Why?  – Why is the story important? Why does it matter?
• How?  –  How did the issue come to be? How are those involved affected?

Identify your audience

Write with your target audience in mind. You might find it useful to develop personas for them, to imagine how they would respond to what you’re writing. Consider things like:

• Their age
• Where they live
• What they care about
• What frustrates them
• How they find out information

Develop your angle

Now you have your facts and your audience, you need to find the most compelling elements to focus on. What will your reader care about most? For example, will the story affect them, their friends or family? Are you sharing an emotional story they can relate to? Are you sharing exciting news about something they'll want to get involved with?

Start with a strong introduction

Your introduction is the most important part of your story. Evidence suggests people spend less than 15 seconds deciding if the content they're looking at is relevant to them. You should:

• Use an enticing headline that tells the reader what the story is about.
• Open with a short, sharp summary of the story, focusing on the most interesting elements. Imagine you’re talking about this story in the pub with a friend – spot the most interesting thing about it and open with that.
• Use simple, everyday language people will understand immediately, and that matches the tone you're going for. For example, if you want people to share their story, you'll want to make sure your language is encouraging and friendly.

You want to avoid having somebody read the introduction and think ‘So what?’

Edit, test and edit again

The best stories are simple and focused. Write your story, walk away, and then edit it with fresh eyes and your reader in mind. Test it with other people to make sure it’s interesting enough.

Top tips to keep your audience’s attention

• Get to the point
• Avoid jargon and acronyms
• Keep it punchy – use short words, sentences and paragraphs
• Break up text with subheadings and bullet points
• Use strong video, photos or graphics to break up the text
• When talking about your work, focus on the impact of what you did, not the details
• Focus on what your audience cares about
• Include any action the reader can take

About this resource

As with any CRM, it is important to prevent creating multiple records of the same contact.

This resource tells you how to make sure you keep your data tidy by telling you how to find and merge duplicate records

Stroke is the fourth biggest killer in the UK, according to the Stroke Association, behind dementia, heart disease and cancer. There are more than 100,000 strokes in the UK every year, with 1,200,000 stroke survivors. To make sure everybody affected by stroke gets the help they need, services across the country need to change.

Stroke is included in the NHS Long Term Plan as one of the major health conditions for which local services need to provide better care. The plan includes a series of milestones the NHS aims to achieve. Now local NHS services need to hear from people in their communities to inform how these plans are implemented locally.

Healthwatch have a crucial role to play in putting people at the heart of plans for future services. This briefing includes case studies about Healthwatch who have already been involved with the reconfiguration of stroke services in their areas, and how they’ve engaged the public.

About this resource

A business continuity plan helps ensure that business process can continue during a time of emergency or disaster. For example, the building has no power, staff are unable to get in due to adverse weather conditions, there is an emergency meaning all staff should stay home, or there is a key system failure .

We have developed a template that you can use to create your own business continuity plan. The template highlights key bits of information that you should include to ensure that your organisation is ready and able to respond to situations when they arise such as:

• Key staff members contact details
• Critical suppliers contact details
• Key actions that should take place to prevent risk to the business and staff

About

A Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) is a process to help you identify and minimise the data protection risks of a project. 

It's essential to carry out a DPIA in the planning stages of any projects where:

• You’re collecting any new personal or special category data from people.
• You’re introducing a new database, survey tool or online feedback centre.
• You’re introducing a new data analysis tool.
• You’re working with a new partner to collect data for the first time, for example, with another local Healthwatch.
• You’re engaging a new data processor.
• You’re planning a different approach to collecting or storing feedback from the public, for example, holding data online rather than physically.
• A personal data breach would jeopardise the physical health or safety of individuals.

Step one - Find who you need to talk to

The first step is to research which elected representatives would benefit from hearing about your work.

To find the MPs who represent the community you work with, visit https://www.parliament.uk to search for MPs by postcode.

To get the contact details for local councillors, check out the website of your local authorities in your area. District councillors in two-tier areas may be less directly involved in health and social care, but will still be interested in local issues.

Remember to be clear about why you want to talk to them. Are they a community representative or do they hold a specific position or sit on a relevant committee as well?

Understanding how decisions are made locally will help with this research. For example, what type of council is the elected representative involved in? What are they responsible for? This guide to local government can help you.

Step two - Be proactive and relevant

An election gives you a great opportunity to get in touch with an elected representative to make sure they understand the role of local Healthwatch and how you can help.

Whether there has been an election or not, MPs and councillors will be interested in local people’s views, and the concerns they have. However, you can help by ensuring what you share is tailored and relevant.

• Does it relate to their constituency or ward?
• Does the elected representative have a history of being interested in certain issues?
• Will the information help them with an upcoming decision or debate?

You can find out about the upcoming work of elected representative by looking at the forward plan of a local council or what is coming up in Parliament using the Parliament calendar. You can also contact local or national committees to ask them about their future work.

Your role on local Health and Wellbeing Boards also provide another opportunity to alert elected representatives about the experiences people have shared with you. 

Step three - Keep the lines of communication open

Stay in touch after the first contact. Steps you can take include:

• Sending them new reports, news and your annual report
• Offering them briefings a few times a year on the key issues facing the community

Some local Healthwatch support elected representatives by helping to answer the health and social care questions from local people. Holding joint health and social care information surgeries is one way to do this and can help you a gathering more feedback from your community.

Step four - Remember our role. Remember purdah.

A productive relationship with elected representatives will benefit your community but it’s important to always maintain your independence and political impartiality.

Our ‘Guide to maintaining independence’ can help you do this. 

With elections regularly being held across England, it’s also essential that, when they happen, you act in a politically neutral manner.

Our ‘Purdah guidance’ explains more about how you should behave during national and local elections.