About this event
The Healthwatch network is working within the very real context of a national decision to wind down the Healthwatch infrastructure, while many local hosts continue to hold important statutory and community roles.
Although we must await the outcome of the legislative process—and recognise that future changes may affect areas differently—this workshop offers a supportive space to explore how organisations can approach transitions and endings, whether chosen or imposed, with clarity, care, and a focus on protecting mission, people, communities, and the legacy of patient voice.
The session will be led by Iona Lawrence from The Decelerator, who supports civil society organisations to plan and navigate mergers, leadership transitions, programme closures, and other organisational endings as part of the natural cycle of change.
The session will also include a conversation with a non-profit sector leader from outside the Healthwatch network who has navigated externally-driven organisational change..
Type of event
Online workshop where we're hoping you'll contribute to discussions, ask questions, reflect, and share with peers from across the network. We'd ask that you have your camera on if at all possible.
Who is this event for?
This session is for Healthwatch Chairs and board members.
What you will learn?
The workshop will give you the opportunity to consider:
- Why these conversation matters for the Healthwatch network now;
- What counts as an ending? With an overview of different types of transition — wind-downs, mergers, transfers of function, transformations.
- What makes an ending or a transition go well, and what makes it go badly? Drawing on The Decelerator's direct experience of supporting organisations through externally-driven change.
- Insights from The Decelerator and partners on the patterns that emerge when statutory or infrastructure bodies are decommissioned: what tends to happen to local organisations, to staff, to community relationships, and to the functions those organisations held.
- Reflections and learning from a leader from outside the Healthwatch network who has navigated externally-driven organisational change.
- An introduction to the Deceleration Principles and what responsible leadership through transition looks like in practice.
Who is running this event?
The Decelerator