engaging communities (ecs)

Engaging Communities (ECS) represents a holistic way of obtaining and responding to customer feedback, initially in the Health and Social Care arena, but with a view to expanding beyond this. It is an independent community led organisation that will bring together engagement, consultation, complaints and consumer advice and insight services for health and social care in one place. In this way it will reduce duplication and support consistent, transparent engagement. To do this we bring together public engagement, consultation and consumer advice services within a central organisation. At Engaging Communities we understand the complexities of the complaints process and have introduced a range of support mechanisms to help organisations act upon, resolve and learn from complaints they receive. By working with local organisations that are already doing things well, Engaging Communities is able to coordinate intelligence centrally becoming a hub of information. This allows us to see the bigger picture in a way that has not been possible before. ECS also offers partner organisations the opportunity to reduce duplication and provide a more efficient, community-led approach to engagement. Partner organisations will be able to commission Engaging Communities, as an independent and transparent organisation, to develop relationships with communities to generate feedback to provide insight to inform commissioning decisions. As a central hub of engagement information it will allow organisations to the see the 'big picture' in a way that has not previously been possible. There will be a greater understanding of who we are not engaging with and therefore solutions put in place to target these groups.