North East Hampshire and Farnham Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) is responsible for planning, agreeing, funding and monitoring your local health care services, so it’s important to us that we get it right for you.

This means getting local people involved at the very beginning of a project.  Better decisions are made when the general public and professionals work together.

Working in partnership with patients, carers, families and local people brings a different perspective to our understanding and can challenge our view of how we think services are received.

We have outlined our approach and our ambitions in our Engagement and Communications Strategy.

Good engagement results in:

• improved services for all;
• better outcomes and patient experiences
• better understanding of how to care for yourself;
• better understanding of which service you need

In recent years we have explored and expanded the ways we work with local people, giving them more opportunity to be involved, such as:

• Following us on Twitter or Facebook
• Keeping up to date through our newsletters
• Becoming a Community Ambassador 
• Coming along to our Community Forum or Innovation Conference
• Attending our Governing Body meetings in public
• Come to our Annual General Meeting
• Attending United Communities (Mental Health service users & carers)
• Contacting us by email, phone or post (details here)
• Contacting us with specific comments, questions, compliments or complaints
• Getting involved with your GP surgery's Patient Participation Group

For more information on how local people have helped shape our work and your health services to date, please see our newsletters. You can also find examples of how local people have helped to shape services on our You said...we did page.

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We work closely with patient champion Healthwatch in both Hampshire and Surrey and support their #ItStartsWithYou campaign, which encourages people to speak up and help to make services better for their communities.

For more information on our work with our voluntary sector partners, click here.