Sefton residents are being invited to share their thoughts and ideas on how health commissioners in the borough could better involve them in their local NHS.

There are a number of ways that people can currently find out more about the work of NHS South Sefton Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and NHS Southport and Formby CCG or get involved in what they do. This includes taking part in surveys, coming along to their governing body meetings, or directly contacting the CCGs with their queries and questions via email, website, phone or post.

Graham Bayliss, lay representative for patient and public engagement of NHS South Sefton CCG, said: “We greatly value the views of our residents and their feedback helps to shape our work. So it’s important that as many people as possible have the opportunity to give their views when we are asking about health issues that matter to them most.”

Both CCGs hold regular public events, called ‘Big Chats’, where residents are asked for their views and experiences to help shape the health commissioners’ latest work. However, the CCGs understand that different people will prefer different ways to feedback their experiences of local health services, or to get involved in what they do.

Graham added: “There is always more we can do to get people involved in our work and new and different ways like social media that we can use to do this. We want to hear from residents about how they would like us to involve them and we’re inviting people to tell us how we can best do this by taking part in our survey.”

Sefton residents are asked to complete a short online survey about the ways they would like the CCGs to update them or involve them in their work. Feedback will help the CCGs to look at new and different ways to involve and inform their residents in the future.

Anyone with an interest in local health is invited to take part in the questionnaire, which can be found on here, along with short films highlighting the views of Big Chat attendees and how they think the CCGs could improve how they involve people in the work of the local NHS.