This suite of resources was developed by Health Issues Centre with funding from Safer Care Victoria. They aim to support health services and consumers to enhance their quality of engagement and partnership.
For more information and if you would like support to implement these in your health service, please contact Health Issues Centre at training@hic.org.au or call (03) 8676 9050.
Resources for health services
UPDATED – Guides for inclusive consumer and community engagement. These three guides were designed to support health services to undertake inclusive consultation and engage with diverse consumers and communities. We engaged with several health services to trial these three guides in practice and in June 2022, we reviewed and updated the guides to reflect the feedback we received. The new look resources are now available for you to download.
- Guide for inclusive community consultations. This Guide outlines the step-by-step process to set up and conduct successful inclusive consultations. It includes a description of 28 generic consultation methods and 32 methods to consult with specific communities.
- Guide to engaging diverse consumers in organisation and governance structures. This Guide outlines the processes, planning stages and methods for engaging with consumers from diverse backgrounds; and resources and templates to recruit and select consumers to be engaged in governance and organisational committees. *Previously ‘Guide to engage with diverse consumers in healthcare partnerships’
- Fact Sheet to align with the Safer Care Victoria’s Partnering in Healthcare Framework with the Rainbow Tick.
Consumer Mentorship Program. This program was designed for health services to support consumers engaged in representative or advisory roles. Experienced consumers (mentors) have a role to play in mentoring emerging or new consumers (mentees). These two resources will provide the background information and step-by-step guidance to establish, implement and evaluate a mentorship program in a health or community service. Click here to access the Consumer Mentorship Program Manual and Consumer Mentorship Program Guide.
Consumer Recruitment and Support. Train the Trainer Program. This program was designed to support key staff of health services to train others in the organisation to recruit and support consumers engaged in governance and organisational committees. These two resources provide the background information, step-by-step guide to implement the training program and the resources, tools and templates required to recruit, select and support consumers engaged in a health service. Click here to access the Train the Trainer Manual and Train the Trainer Toolbox.
Resource for consumers
The Guide for consumers to self-assess the quality of their engagement in healthcare organisations was designed to support consumers to assess their engagement with health services according to a continuum of engagement: at the early stages of engagement (‘’emerging’’), those who have been engaged for a while (‘’evolving’’), and those who have been engaged for a long time (‘’expert’’). The Guide also includes a description of the set of skills and knowledge that consumers need to be effective representatives or advisors, and a Training Needs Assessment tool so that consumers can identify their training needs and advocate for this training to be offered by the health services they are engaged with. Click here to access the Guide.
Community Advisory Committee (CAC) Evaluation Framework v1.0. This evaluation framework provides a consistent approach with tools and resources that can be applied or adapted to guide internal evaluation and enable continuous quality improvement of a health service’s Community Advisory Committee (CAC). The evaluation should be designed in accordance with the Committee’s purpose as defined in its Terms of Reference and organisational readiness. Click here to access the the framework.
