The Christie NHS FT Annual Report & Accounts 2019-20

The Christie NHS Foundation Trust Annual Report & Accounts 2019-20

Membership: Keeping people involved

communication between the community and the hospital. We have an established and increasing group of members who have joined our ‘patient databank’ representing patients and carers. These members are invited to take part in focus groups to give us first hand feedback about our existing services and input into the ways in which we may wish to develop our services in the future. Focus group topics discussed this year included; Experiences of cancer treatment, EDS2 assessment, Patient experience of clinical trials, Health monitoring in the home, Immune response monitoring in the home, Wearables and continuous monitoring – assessment of devices, Self-sampling of blood at home, Eproms chatbot, MyChriste-MyHealth. Public membership This is open to anyone aged 16 or over, living in England and Wales. There are currently 13 areas within this constituency, 11 based on local government electoral boundaries within our network with the others covering the ‘North West’ and ‘Remainder of England and Wales’. There is one governor for all public areas except Manchester and Cheshire, which each have two. At the end of March 2020 we had 11,861 public members. Staff membership Our staff and volunteers automatically become members as they join The Christie. The classes within the constituency are medical staff, nurses, other clinical professional staff, and non-clinical staff and volunteers. At the end of March 2020 we had 3,079 staff members and 163 volunteer members. There are two constituencies within the membership, as detailed below:

Being a member is a way of showing your support for The Christie. Members can be patients, friends, relatives, staff and members of the public. We keep our members informed about the latest Trust news and invite them to special events, giving them a voice via the ability to elect their governor. Through the model of membership, people can influence the way we deliver our services and future strategies. Recruitment and representation By the end of March 2020, The Christie’s total membership was 15,103 members (including staff and volunteers). Having a large group of supporters providing a wide opinion base helps us to maintain a high profile for the Trust and develop the services we provide. We use a variety of approaches to recruit members including through our membership newsletter, as a result of community engagement by our public governors and via social media and our website. As a specialist tertiary centre, we feel our membership should reflect both the size and diversity of the population we serve and the activities we undertake. We monitor the age, gender and ethnic mix of our membership and would like to recruit more members particularly from underrepresented groups. The council of governors, through its membership and community engagement committee, is responsible for ensuring that we have a representative, active and engaged membership. This is achieved through our three year membership strategy and supporting annual action plan. The strategy runs from April 2019 to March 2022. Our governors have taken a proactive approach to engagement and go into the community and act as Christie ambassadors, being an open line of

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