HOW TO CREATE A USER’S ADVISORY COUNCIL IN HEALTH AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS?

Background: The Users Advisory Council is a key tool for health and social organizations that allows them to better understand the needs to be met, improves the user experience, facilitates the strategic alignment of the organization and promotes transformative and ethical action. The creation of a User’s Advisory Council implies a high degree of maturity of the organization in the culture of participation.

 

La Unió is an association of 115 health and social entities that provide public health and social services in Catalonia, which has a driving group for the improvement of the participatory culture in organizations. Although a User’s Advisory Council is seen as very important, few entities have implemented it. La Unió organized a workshop in order to learn from the experiences and establish a common framework of requirements for the implementation of an User’s Advisory Council

 

Approach: Participatory workshop with more than 60 attendees from different professional profiles of health and social entities. Based on 3 experiences of implementing User’s Advisory Council, difficulties and key elements for success were analysed and a series of recommendations were made.

 

The three experiences had in common that it was a group of 10-15 people, with different profiles of gender, age and health and social conditions, who meet 3-4 times a year to discuss issues related to user care (accessibility, treatment, circuits, quality and safety...). The groups are coordinated by agents of the organization and use participatory methodologies (Design Thinking or others) to develop structured proposals.

 

The main challenges identified were: achieving representativeness of the user community and maintaining a stable group with commitment from the participants; giving feedback to the User’s Advisory Council and monitor result and impact indicators, and ensure that the User’s Advisory Council contributions are valued and incorporated by the entity management committee.

Results:

The recommendations have been published in a report that is summarized below:

1.Composition of the User’s Advisory Council: it must guarantee the representativeness of the diversity of users

2.Dynamics of participation: with a planned calendar of meetings, with dynamization of the same, with prior preparation of the topics to be discussed and with constant feedback on the evolution of the topics.

3.Establish a clear operating regulation: that clearly delimits objectives, functions, roles, membership and operating dynamics

4.Impact of the agreements: integrate the User’s Advisory Council agreements into the entity's line of action through direct communication with the centre's management, define indicators for monitoring the User’s Advisory Council activity and monitoring the agreements to evaluate results and impact on the entity and the community

5.To make the User’s Advisory Council work visible both within the organisation, involving the different professionals in Council sessions, and in the community through social networks and the web

 

Impact:The recommendations have been disseminated to the 115 entities associated with La Unió and have also been sent to the Health and Social Administration. In a few months, it will be reviewed how many of the entities have set up a User’s Advisory Council.