Examples of our partnership work in 2020-21 include:

• Co-ordinating Cheshire’s system-wide communications and engagement response to COVID-19 and the COVID-19 Vaccination roll-out
  
• Supporting the Cheshire East and Cheshire West Integrated Care Partnerships to deliver engagement at Care Community-level
  
• Collaborative approach to engaging with marginalised and vulnerable groups across the sub-region
  
• Leading role in the multi-agency Mental Health Partnership Board – chaired by our Executive Director for Strategy and Partnership
  
• Supporting the development of the Cheshire East Place plan
  
• Clinical involvement and engagement in Cheshire East Place acute models of care review
  
• Overview and support of three Maternity Voice Partnerships across Cheshire
  
• Oversight and management of a Cheshire system COVID-19 Co-ordination centre
  
• Supporting the design of a green social prescribing approach across Cheshire
  
• Founding the Live Well for Longer Engagement Group in Cheshire East to support joint commissioning and wider partnership strategy development

Ethnic communities

• Cheshire, Halton and Warrington Race and Equality Centre (CHAWREC) recruitingcommunity connectors to share translated information and gather insight into vaccine hesitancy
  
• Pathways CIC engaged in Cheshire East to reach out to Eastern European communities through a network of connectors and social media messages in their first language
  
• Insight gathered from the work with Eastern Europeans has been used to inform national public health messaging
  
• Working with large employers and recruitment agencies to encourage Eastern European workers to take the vaccine
  
• Faith sector engaged to address vaccine-hesitant cultural concerns
  
• Text messaging and letters to digitally-excluded communities

Marginalised communities

• Healthwatch working in collaboration with the River Chaplaincy to engage with Cheshire’s boating community. GP Access cards used to support residents of no fixed abode to register with a GP
  
• Cheshire’s Gypsy and Traveller Liaison Officers sharing key messages and videos via WhatsApp community groups, undertaking lateral flow tests and engaging with the community to discuss the vaccine. Clinical Directors working with Gypsy and Traveller Liaison Officers and community services teams to vaccinate traveller communities
  
• Local Gypsy and Irish Traveller support group commissioned to work with the community to create videos and picture-book style information leaflets for those who find reading a challenge
  
• Farming Community influencers identified to support messaging to this community
  
• Working in partnership with Reaseheath Agricultural College to engage students from rural communities as local influencers

Learning disabilities or autism

• National resources tested with people with learning disabilities or autism to determine the most appropriate assets to use
  
• Cheshire Disability Access Forum providing information and reasonable adjustment care plan
  
• Adjustments made at vaccination hubs to accommodate needs such as quiet spaces and numbing creams for needle phobia. This was supported by a video in simple language to explain what to expect at vaccination centres

Mental illness

• Staff toolkit developed to support visits and online conversations
  
• Messages shared from Clinical Director, lead nurse and pharmacist

Homelessness and rough sleepers

• Health Protection and homelessness teams providing access to a COVID-19 vaccine for local people experiencing homelessness and rough sleeping – including “couch-surfers” and those in hostels
  
• Foodbanks and homeless centres providing vaccination information
  
• Community sector organisations helping to identify the most appropriate locations to vaccinate people

Asylum seekers

• Worked with housing providers to identify additional locations where homeless people live to ensure they were offered a COVID-19 vaccination
  
• Worked with the Asylum Seekers and Refugees Partnership Group to ensure key messages were shared about the COVID-19 vaccine

Young People

• Pathways CIC engaged to recruit young people to develop messages and gather insight from people aged 18-30

Maternity

• Focus Group held in partnership with Healthwatch to understand concerns of women of childbearing age about pregnancy, fertility and contraception
  
• Videos produced by clinicians to address concerns

Case study 1 - COVID-19 Vaccination Programme

From the moment it became clear that a viable COVID-19 vaccine was likely to be approved for use in England, intensive engagement and communication planning was led by NHS Cheshire Clinical Commissioning Group with a single core aim – to ensure the people of Cheshire had the information they needed to come forward for a vaccination with confidence when it was their turn. Working with colleagues across the health and care system, we developed and regularly updated a single central webpage of trusted information and co-ordinated weekly meetings with communications and engagement specialists from across the Cheshire health and care system. Together, we worked to ensure Cheshire spoke with one voice to help remove barriers to vaccination. Early highlights included high-profile media coverage of the first person to receive the vaccination in Cheshire – 92-year-old Mona Thomas at the Countess of Chester Hospital – the launch of Cheshire’s first GP-led vaccination services in Winsford and Frodsham and the vital role of volunteers. To support the significant expansion of the vaccination programme in early 2021, we co-ordinated video footage and patient testimonials from every one of Cheshire’s GP-led vaccination centres and established a regular rhythm of briefings to share progress updates. Less than 10 weeks after the first jab was administered in Cheshire, the county was confirmed as the best in the North West for vaccinating the top four priority groups. Our January 2021 Governing Body meeting included a dedicated interactive public question and answer session about Cheshire’s COVID-19 Vaccination Programme, with subsequent targeted webinars aimed at tackling barriers to vaccination. For example, local insight by Healthwatch Cheshire and local care homes revealed that concerns about fertility were particularly prevalent in local women of child-bearing age. To address these concerns, local clinicians and fertility experts supported “talking heads” videos targeting people aged 16-35, while we also engaged with specific targeted groups including Sure Start, Maternity Voices Partnership, Motherwell and online groups. Translated and easy read resources were used to reach into Cheshire’s minority and ethnic communities alongside “trusted voices” videos – led by clinicians and community leaders in multiple languages. In March 2021, this was built on via consistent support for the regional #LetsGetVaccinated campaign.

Case study 2 - Cheshire Chat

Cheshire Chat is the name for our public engagement events in which senior leaders and members of our programme teams engage with members of the public around specific issues or areas of commissioning work. In 2020-21, we moved quickly to switch these events to an online platform to ensure we continued to hear from our local people and communities and continued to offer them the opportunity to help shape the future of local healthcare. We were one of the first CCGs nationally to engage with local communities online following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic – which was reported on by the Consultation Institute, NHS England Engagement Practitioners and the Future Focused Finance journal. Open to anyone and everyone, in 2020-21 our Cheshire Chat events covered topics including COVID-19, Primary Care, Cancer, Mental Health, Community Services, Care Homes, Prescribing and NHS 111 First with panelists including members of our executive team, medical directors, clinical leads, programme teams and our Head of Urgent Care. We follow up every Cheshire Chat event by circulating resources including presentations, detailed question and answer documents and bitesize recordings of the event, as well as publishing them on our dedicated Cheshire Chat webpage. Cheshire Chat sessions throughout 2020-21 have been invaluable and have enabled us to continue to understand how the work we do across Cheshire impacts on our communities.

Case study 3 - Insight and Intelligence

In order to plan and buy the healthcare services that the people of Cheshire need, we constantly evaluate patient feedback from a wide range of sources – cross-referencing feedback received via our Patient Experience and Communications and Engagement teams with data shared by fellow NHS organisations, Healthwatch Cheshire and others. Since April 2020 NHS Cheshire Clinical Commissioning Group has produced comprehensive Insight and Intelligence Reports on a trimester basis to ensure patient feedback is systematically collated and shared with senior leaders and clinical leads. This rich source of real-time patient feedback is also shared with our commissioning teams across the CCG to ensure the patient voice remains right at the centre of our decision-making. Designed to reflect the diversity of the local population, the reports are used to influence every stage of the commissioning cycle. Crucially, there is also a clear process for feeding back to people about the difference their input has made via You Said, We Did.