I’m an engagement specialist. I listen to people and find out what’s important to them so they get what they need from health services.
I visit GP practices across London to promote hospital services at the Cleveland Clinic. I offer education for GPs led by world-class Consultant speakers that work at the Cleveland Clinic. I invite GPs to the hospital and conduct tours so they can see the quality of care we provide. I ensure broader primary care teams have seamless and positive interactions with the hospital when referring and liaising. I build and maintain relationships with both GP and Consultant and foster productive working relationships.
In Essex I led the design and services consultation for a new community mental health hub, providing holistic services for older people closer to where they live. I designed and facilitated engagement events for a wide range of stakeholders, often presenting to large groups of residents. I prepared reports on the engagement process for executive teams to show progress, flag risks and issues. The new hub opened in 2024.
In Bexley I worked at pace to win back the confidence of GPs and practice teams to deliver the enhanced access contract across primary care networks (PCNs). I provided advice to GPs and practice teams on effective communications with patients and worked with web providers to develop a demo website for practices to duplicate. The landing page is now part of most Bexley GP practice websites.
After listening to patients, residents and GPs talk about how important joined-up mental health services are for people with severe mental illnesses, I documented feedback and championed their views and helped launch Integrated Recovery Hubs in Kingston and Richmond. This service transformation made the journey in and out of mental health services much smoother for patients.
In Haringey I spoke to patients and staff about their ideal inpatient facility. I documented feedback and championed their views to inform the design of the new inpatient building at St Ann’s Hospital. The design feature patients wanted the most was independent access to outdoor space, that would help promote mental and physical wellbeing and reduce pressure on staff. Tour Blossom Court here.
In Enfield, I spoke to staff and patients about what aspects of a mental health home treatment service was important to them and why. Based on their feedback I helped launch this new service into market.
In Merton, I conducted focus groups with Year 5 and Year 8s to gather insight into language and understanding of mental health and emotional wellbeing, so young people’s voices were at the heart of a campaign that promoted online support.
In Hackney and Waltham Forest, I visited GP practices and helped them to developed audit tools so they could find patients at higher risk of cancer and set up recall alerts in patient records. These tools helped GPs to select cases that had the most learning potential about what went right and what they could have done better. My work was evaluated and the findings revealed less variation in terms of the timeliness of cancer diagnoses across the boroughs that received the engagement.
At the University of Brighton, I was part of a research team that secured funding from the European Commission to coordinate a work-package for a European pilot project exploring the feasibility of business social responsibility as a HIV prevention strategy. We explored the feasibility and acceptability to businesses of developing and implementing a European model of HIV prevention that provides common HIV/STI prevention standards across eight countries. I designed and delivered a train-the-trainer programme in social mediation to build the capacity of these organisations to effectively design and implement HIV prevention strategies at a local level. My training was translated into 8 languages to enable local organisations to build the capacity of other organisations through training and workforce development.
In 2003 the findings from the NSW Attorney General’s Department’s ‘You Shouldn’t Have To Hide To Be Safe’ provided a foundation for my report to Council proposing an art-based project documenting fear and safety in the LGBT community, Walking the Same Streets. City of Sydney’s political climate at the time was volatile due to a recent merging of councils and art-based community development projects aiming to reduce crime required substantial evidence to secure financial backing. The report ‘You Shouldn’t Have To Hide To Be Safe’ acted as clear and current evidence supporting the need for innovative initiatives that engage LGBT’s at risk of violence and raise awareness about their safety.
The Travelers’ Project was an initiative that arose from consultation with the Cambodian community by the Multicultural HIV/AIDS Health Service (MHAHS) in 2000. A recommendation was to produce a culturally appropriate resource to target Cambodian-Australian men travelling back to Cambodia for holidays or business who may practice unsafe sex whilst away and put their sexual partners at risk when they return to Australia. My approach was to shadow workers from services such as DISC (The Drug Intervention Service Cabramatta) who were already engaging with these communities on a direct client basis and to attend community network meeting for workers who engage with these communities as part of their existing briefs. Travel agents and community groups in each language group were easier to access once I identified key community players with some influence. GP’s in most cases were easier to access (through the 5 Divisions of Practice in SW) as they already had a medical and social impact understanding of HIV/AIDS and hence saw the benefit of a HIV prevention/education resource. While it was in the general interest of GP’s to distribute a resource such as this one, engaging with their associations and members of influence was still a case of forging strong relationships with projects from the sectors in SW who had a precedence of engaging GPs effectively in relation to health outcomes.