NHS Waltham Forest involved a major consultancy firm in the preparation and design of a series of events. The aim of these was to interact with their local community in order to discover the issues that the community faced and also to listen actively to their opinions. At one of these events the Messenger handset was used for the facilitated sending in of free texts, comments and ideas, whilst the Classic was used for consensus voting.

Over the course of the meeting 1,300 messages were sent which worked out at an average of a message every two seconds!

Not only did the organisers feel the event was a great success, but also members of the public who attended the meeting gave very positive feedback:

“Enjoyed the voting – made me feel the NHS actually do care what the service users think and will consider what has been said and also made me feel I was involved.”

“To be honest before I got there I was not expecting much. I’ve been to public consultation events before and have not found them to be that great. However, I must say that I thought this event was very good.”

www.walthamforest.nhs.uk

Liverpool was the European Capital of Culture for 2008 and has enjoyed a fabulous renaissance. However, as with all major cities, there are still pockets of severe deprivation. The strategic partnership for the city, ‘Liverpool First’ are tasked with improving this situation and specifically standards of health, education, housing, safety and economic growth. Such investment is coming through a Local Area Agreement. As an innovative way of consultation ‘Liverpool First’ used the handsets in a series of five meetings throughout the city to involve local people in the prioritisation of their targets to help develop an inclusive LAA.
www.liverpoolfirst.org.uk

The most improved council of 2008 have continued to move forward. They recognised that to continue to develop they needed the support of their employees. ‘One Voice’ was their internal meeting where 3,800 staff were invited for a single day conference aimed at heightening the sense of ‘team’ and investigating staff morale. The software allowed them to drill down on the employee demographics with questions such as length of service, department, sex and age being used to investigate their attitudes. This enabled the organisers to better identify where their priorities should lie.

The feedback was superb and B & D were able to use the information to help create policy based on what their employees told them.
www.barking-dagenham.gov.uk

East Sussex County Council held several interactive meetings to consult with 13-19 year olds to understand their concerns. The anonymity afforded by handset voting revealed defined issues for this group that would not have been discovered through more traditional methods. The success of the event was measured by the high levels of participation and the positive approach of the council in acting on the results. Amongst other initiatives an anti bullying strategy with dedicated full time staff has been created.
www.eastsussex.gov.uk

"Initially conducted a meeting for unpaid carers in Northampton to understand their obstacles in providing for the sick and elderly. This was followed by a series of ‘Prevention’ meetings aimed at raising awareness of services and strategies to help residents understand and feedback on the support network currently available. The aim was to identify and deal with people's problems to enable them to get help at an early stage and prevent them become dependent on social services. The ‘Listening to You’ series of road shows were well attended and provided vital information to the area."
www.northamptonshire.gov.uk