improving standards of consultation & engagement (1)

To Leicester City Council (B Block, New Walk Centre) at lunchtime for the first meeting of a Task and Finish Group on Improving Standards of Consultation and Engagement across the Partnership. There's a cross-section of people representing different bodies involved with the Leicester Strategic Partnership: City Council, Leicester City NHS, University Hospitals Leicester (UHL), Leicestershire Constabulary, B-Inspired, Voluntary Action Leicester, I'm there on behalf of the Equality and Diversity Partnership (EDP). We're discussing ways to tighten up processes by which service users in the city are informed, consulted and engaged on the various aspects of work being done on their behalf. There's a genuine acknowledgement of the need to pool experience, knowledge and resources (for obvious reasons), to cut through the opacity of beuraucratic language and to make everything as user-focused and user-friendly as possible. We jump over one of the early items on the agenda - election of a Chair - and decide to use the short time we have together today actually to do some work. We set ourselves a tight deadline of having everything finished by 10 June, as that is the day on which Yasmin, the group coordinator, starts her maternity leave. Now that's the kind of deadline that can't be pushed back!