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Patient and public involvement

You can get involved whether or not you have used our services. If you or your family have been a patient of ours recently, we would really appreciate your comments - good or bad - and suggestions. You may actually never have used the ambulance service, but if you have an interest we’d still love to hear from you.

Our Inclusion Strategy

The Trust has developed an Inclusion Strategy to ensure that we engage and involve all our stakeholders effectively, in ways appropriate to them. All our foundation trust members will receive regular invitations to get involved. You might like to attend group meetings or perhaps just take part in surveys from time to time; you may want to take part on a one-off basis to comment on a particular issue, or as an ongoing member – it’s completely up to you to have as little or as much involvement as you would like.

If you haven’t joined already, do join us as a foundation trust member - it’s completely free! You'll be asked how you would like to get involved.

The Inclusion Strategy was developed in partnership with our stakeholders during a 6 month consultation period. A full report of the consultation undertaken and its outcomes is available.

Be part of our Inclusion Hub Advisory Group

To help deliver and monitor the progress of our Inclusion Strategy, we recruited members to participate in an ‘Inclusion Hub Advisory Group (IHAG)’ of people bringing a range of views and perspectives from across the South East Coast area. SECAmb staff brief the group on plans and service changes and seek the group’s advice on whether wider community engagement is necessary or simply gather the views of the IHAG to inform our plans. This group are also able to feed information on issues of importance to them into the Trust.

Members were recruited to the group following a comprehensive recruitment campaign which was launched in summer 2012. We had a huge response and as a result now work closely with a wonderfully diverse group of individuals on a regular basis. A role description developed as part of this process sets out the purpose of the group, and includes more information about how the group works and the skills and qualities identified as beneficial to the group. Members of the IHAG spend a minimum of 6 days per year working with us to ensure the views of our members are taken into account whenever we plan changes to our services. All members are required to become members of the Trust.

The group currently reflects the criteria identified during our consultation on developing an Inclusion Strategy. However, we know that vacancies will arise at some point in the future and if you are interested in applying to join the IHAG or finding out more about the work of the group, please contact Angela Rayner, Inclusion Manager, using any of the following means:

• Email: angela.rayner@secamb.nhs.uk
• Mob: 07771 958085
• Tel: 01737 364428
• SMS/text: 07771 958085
• Textphone (via TextRelay): 18001 01737 364428 
• Fax: 01737 363881