About this event
Who is this event for?
Local Healthwatch lead officers.
Another senior staff member is welcome to attend in your place if you’re not available, but we’ll assume they’re able to fully participate in discussions.
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 there are some considerations that are relevant to all lead officers who report to their boards.
Ensuring that you could ‘close well’ if the need were to arise and whenever that was, can provide the foundation on which to then explore all options for transition. Knowing you’ve done what you can to minimise future risks and are prepared for any eventuality can give your board confidence to make the utmost of current opportunities.
This workshop offers a supportive space to consider 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.
Co-delivered 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.
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.
What you will learn?
The workshop will give you the opportunity to:
- Consider why these conversation matter for the Healthwatch network now.
- Hear a summary of the themes that have emerged as we’ve been speaking to local Healthwatch across the network. Hear the range of thinking about the next ten months that’s been shared with us.
- Share with peers where your thinking is at, how you’re feeling and what support might be needed.
- Explore 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.
- Hear insights from The Decelerator 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.
- Draw conclusions from case study examples.
- Be introduced to the Deceleration Principles and what responsible leadership through transition looks like in practice.
Who is running this event?
The Decelerator and Healthwatch England Network Development Team.