Back in April 2016, the Swansea Healthy Cities Community Voice Portfolio held their Nothing About Us, Without Us event. The event considered lessons learned so far from the Portfolio’s work focussing on enabling citizens to have their voices heard in order to help shape service provision.

The morning session gave beneficiaries of the portfolio, from all seven projects, the opportunity to take part in Theatre Forum as a way of demonstrating some of the issues faced by people who wish participate and engage with public service providers.

The following video captures an example of one of the pieces delivered by the Planning Together project at the event:

During the afternoon, a panel of beneficiaries and service providers took part in a question and answer session inviting discussion on different methods of engagement and how to encourage wider participation.

Feedback has already begun to shape plans for the remainder of the portfolio and actions have been taken as a result of the day, including:

• Increasing awareness of the Language Line translation facility currently available in GP surgeries across City and County of Swansea, to both beneficiaries and surgery staff via the Patient Carer Participation Groups and BME Voice projects
• A small showcase event, revisiting some of the projects’ Theatre Forum pieces for a number of City and County of Swansea Council officers who were unable to attend in April, hosted by Cllr Mark Child

If you would like to get involved with the Community Voice portfolio – either as an individual beneficiary who would like their voice heard or as a public sector provider who would like to improve engagement with citizens across City and County of Swansea - please contact: Charlotte Davies by telephone: 01792 544008 or email: [email protected]

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In May 2015, the portfolio held an event, "Engaging with the community; lessons learnt", which provided the opportunity to consider the work done so far with service providers and to discuss what lies ahead for the portfolio. Excellent feedback was received from attendees and all partners felt they had made new contacts with providers working in their areas. This has built the awareness of the project externally and will be used as a platform to further progress this.
Click here to view a summary report of this event.