Llais Annual Plan 2024-2025

We’re going to keep the big conversation going about what health and social care should look like in the future. We want everyone’s ideas - from every place and every background in Wales - to help make health and care work better together for you.

Our goal is that policy makers, governments and health and social care services listen to what you say and take action so things work in the way you need and want now and in the future.

To help us do this, in 2024-2025 we will be:

Finding out how you can have your say
We’ll do a project to find out what’s already being done in your community to help you have your say. We’ll find out what’s being said, and how services are listening to your ideas. We’ll map it all out to give us a regional and national picture. We’ll share what works well with decision makers in Wales so they can try out what works too.

Talking to more people
Once we understand what’s working and what’s missing, we’re going to have our team talk to groups and representatives in your community and with people whilst they are receiving their health and social care services.

We want to hear from as many people as possible because the more people talk, the better changes we can help make. We will help our communities talk about the things that need to change and use that information, with all the other things we find out, to work with decision makers so they can take action to make things better.

Llais Local – coming to your area
We’re spreading Llais Local all over Wales. This means we’ll come to a range of local towns and neighbourhoods to hear what’s important to you and your friends and neighbours. 

We’ll work with local clubs, charities, and health and social care services to make it easy for you to tell us what you think. We’re planning to visit each region in Wales at least 3 times this year, and we’ll let you know when we’re coming so you can join in.

Joining forces with the Bevan Commission
We’re teaming up with a group of people called the Bevan Commission. They’re all about making health and care better too. Together, we’ll use what we know, and the people we know, to find even better ways to listen to you and help tackle the big things that health and care services will face in the future.

Once we’re all set up with the Bevan Commission, we’ll make a plan for the next 3 years. We’ll start by getting together with the people who plan health and social care services to figure out how to solve problems together for a better health and care future.

Checking in on the Duties of Candour and Quality
In April 2023 Wales brought in some new rules. These are about what needs to happen to help make sure health services are good quality and to be honest and open with people whose care has gone wrong. We’ll do a piece of work that listens to what you and others think about how these rules are working. We’ll tell NHS Wales what we heard and if changes need to be made to help things work better.

What could success look like by March 2025:

It will be clear what engagement and feedback on health and social care looks like in Wales. Community groups, and leaders, are interested and connected to the feedback system. And we start collecting more and more views on the future of health and social care services.

Widespread Community Engagement: by doing Llais Local in each of our regions, and teaming up with the Bevan Commission we’re involving more and more local people in having their say on the future of health and care services in Wales than before.
The NHS Wales has a clearer picture, based on your feedback, about how the Duties of Quality and Candour are working and how things might work better.

We’ll speak up to make health and services better, more inclusive, easier to access, and focused on what people in Wales need. Our priority is to help everyone get great health and social care, and to have health and social care services always thinking about being fair and open to everyone, including everyone, and putting people needs first (people-centred service design).

To help us do this, in 2024-2025 we will:

Listen more
We want to get even better at listening to what everyone has to say and how we can help make things better. Our goal is to hear from more people than we do now. So, we will make more opportunities and ways for people to share their experiences. By next year we want to increase the amount of people we have heard from by at least 30%.

Focus on what each area needs
We’ve listened to local people about what they think are the most important health and social care issues that needs fixing in different places. We will do targeted work to find out much more about the top 3 things raised by people in each area.

These are:

Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan
1. Getting care and treatment quickly when you need it
2. Having a baby
3. Living with Cancer

Cwm Taf Morgannwg
1. Being supported to stay healthy
if you have a learning disability
2. Day services in our communities
3. Food and drink in hospitals

Gwent
1. Community services (health and social care)
2. Getting care quickly when you need it
3. Mental Health services

Neath Port Talbot and Swansea
1. Ethnic minority communities living with dementia
2. Having a baby
3. Young people’s mental health

North Wales
1. Helping to make mental health better
2. Helping to make vascular services better
3. The effect of ‘Special Measures’ on people and services

Powys
1. Care and support closer to home
2. Getting good care wherever you live in Powys
3. Supporting Carers

West Wales
1. Being supported waiting for treatment
2. Supporting carers
3. Young people’s mental health

Expand our All-Wales work
We will continue looking into the things we hear about health and social care services in all parts of Wales. These are getting help at your GP surgery, dentist and pharmacy, and your health and social care support in the community following a hospital stay.

Advance research and policy development
We will look into things in more detail where we have heard you are finding services challenging and it’s having a big impact. We will use what we find out about at least 2 things to call on decision makers to take action, and work with them to help make this happen.

Service changes
We will keep talking to health and social services about their plans, and make sure that you are being involved and listened to in the right ways. To help us do this we will create a way to handle all the service changes we hear about. Where we need to step in and work with you on the change, we will.

We will also find a good way to share regularly what involvement we’ve had and what effects it had on any changes.

Take forward our Strategic Equality Plan
We will help our people understand how to play their part in delivering the plan. We will create a working group to help us to take forward our action plans, and to find ways to reflect equity, diversity, and inclusion in all areas of our work.

Safeguarding people
We will review and improve the way we handle patient safety and safeguarding issues. We will play our part in national initiatives led by others to make sure the views and experiences of the people of Wales are represented within Wales and beyond.

Broaden stakeholder engagement
We will strengthen partnerships with key stakeholders like Social Care Wales and Health Education Improvement Wales - focusing on workforce challenges and supporting people to understand what different staff do in health and social care.

Build a stronger voice in social care
We have started to build good relationships in social care. We need to do more so more people know about us and understand how we can help them. Each of our regions will create plans so we hear from at least 25% more people, service providers, charities and other organisations who support people in social care than we did last year.

Develop our complaints advocacy and enquiries service
We will make our complaints advocacy service more streamlined and common across Wales – so that we are able to support more people and make their experience better, increasing our positive feedback. We will also look at our enquiries and use this data to help us decide what we should do in the future.

What could success look like by March 2025:

Increased feedback from communities
We seek out and listen to a wider range of voices, stories, and experiences than ever before. This means we’ll have better, more diverse feedback to guide health and social care services improvements.

Targeted improvements based on local needs
Some successful interventions and representations in the top 3 health and social care issues identified in each region.

Powerful research and policy changes
Our research, and your voices, are used to take decisions on local, regional, or national health or social care strategies.

Service changes that meet your needs
Clear and easily understood communication of service changes we’ve influenced, showing how your involvement led to making services better.

We’re committed to supporting health and social care to be more joined up, helping services to work well with each other to match what our communities need in the areas that matter most.

No one organisation can do this alone. We want to join forces with people from all sectors and use their strengths and experiences to help make services better, to share what works well and to avoid duplication and waste.

To help us do this, in 2024-2025 we will:

Represent your voice everywhere
Whether it’s local groups, regional partnerships, authorities and boards, or national bodies, we’ll make sure your experiences and needs are represented in the areas that matter most to you. By being a sounding board and critical friend, we’ll ensure that health and social care services are always moving in the right direction.

Join forces
We’ll work closely with others who are looking to make health and social care better so that we strengthen your voice further. This includes the different Commissioners in Wales who each work hard to focus on different groups of people, national bodies like Public Health Wales, Velindre NHS Trust, Welsh Ambulance Services Trust, Health Education and Improvement Wales, professional representative bodies and regulators like Social Care Wales, and inspectors like Healthcare Inspectorate Wales.

Engage with more national offices
We will collaborate with the National Office for Care and Support, the NHS Executive, the NHS Confederation, and watchdogs like Care Inspectorate and Healthcare Inspectorate. This will help us make sure that the voices and needs of communities are heard and addressed at every level of health and social care.

Launch a Rural Programme
Recognising the unique challenges faced by rural areas, we’ll introduce a working group and a specific programme aimed at improving health and social care services outside of urban centres.

Host a complaints summit
In this way health, social care, the Public Services Ombudsman and we can learn together from your experiences to make sure it leads to real changes in how services are delivered – to help shape a better health and social care system.

Share more of what works
We’ll spotlight and share the success stories from across health and social care. By highlighting what’s working and encouraging others to adopt these approaches, we want to help spread what works far and wide. This will help make services better for more people and avoid waste and repetition.

Continue to contribute to Healthcare Summits
These gatherings bring together everyone involved in reviewing and improving services to share what we know about how the different NHS bodies are performing and to identify Wales wide issues – so that actions can be agreed to make health and care better for everyone.

Engage more young people
We’re making it a priority to listen to and work with more groups and bodies that represent young people. We will get their advice on how to improve our own services to help us find out what young people really need and want from their health and social care.

Make more collaboration agreements
We’re setting up formal agreements with other organisations. This isn’t just paperwork—it’s our promise to work hand-in-hand with partners across all sectors to improve health and social care.

Involve more stakeholders in our national projects and initiatives
When we plan national projects looking into the big issues, we won’t just invite you to be a part of it. We’ll invite representatives from other groups involved in making health and social care better to be part of our planning, delivery, and to take forward changes directly.

What could success look like by March 2025:

We are listening and making changes together
We’ve brought people together to think about learning from complaints, and represented your interests in lots of places. Because of this, we have started to make a stronger system of feedback that takes everyone’s ideas and complaints and uses them to make health and social care better. So, when you tell us what’s not working, ‘we all’ really listen and work to fix it.

Sharing ideas
We found some really clever ways to make health and social care better and less wasteful. Now, we’re telling everyone about these smart ideas and they start to use them too.

Teaming up with youth groups
We’ve made strong relationships with young people, or groups that listen to young people and we have started making sure those young voices are heard by the people who plan and run health and social care, so they know what young people need and want.

We are working together better
We made agreements with lots of different health, care groups and third sector groups, to make sure we’re all working together, not doing the same work twice. This means we’re all teaming up to make health and social care work for everyone in Wales.

The rate at which health and social care services are bringing in digital tools, data-driven strategies, and ethical Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasing. These things can make services easier and faster for everyone.

It’s natural for people to feel a bit unsure about using them, or worried about things like how their personal information is protected and kept safe. We want to help people and services talk to each other so everyone feels okay withthese new tools and technologies, everyone can use them if they want to and no one feels left behind.

To help us do this, in 2024-2025 we will:

Represent you on the NHS Wales App
We’ll represent your voice when it comes to the new NHS Wales App, making sure it meets your needs. By gathering what we hear, and sharing what we know is important to you with the developers, we can help shape the app in a way that meets your needs.

Promote safe use and sharing of personal data
Your privacy matters. We will voice your concerns and questions about how digital tools use and protect your personal data. By representing your interests, we’ll push for the highest standards of data privacy and security in health and social care digital tools – and make sure you have a say in how your data is shared.

Support digital inclusion initiatives
We understand not everyone feels ready to jump into using digital health tools or may not have a way of using them. That’s why we’ll find out more about the barriers you might face and advocate for programmes that help everyone learn and feel comfortable with these technologies, to help make sure no one is left behind.

Enhance our knowledge on digital developments
We’re here to learn about the latest in digital health and care too. By staying informed about digital developments and innovations, we can better represent your voice and make the digital strategies developed by health and social care services truly benefit you.

Get help on our digital services strategy
We’ll work closely with others like the Centre for Digital Public Services (CDPS) and Digital Health and Care Wales to help plan our digital strategy to make sure it really meets your needs and makes our services better for everyone.

What could success look like by March 2025:

We have played our part in supporting the NHS Wales App to become a trusted tool that’s easy for everyone to use.

Your voices on privacy, data security and data sharing have led to clear standards and explanations about how your information is kept safe and shared. This means you can use digital health and care tools without worrying about your personal information.

Greater digital inclusion: We have worked with others and our push for understanding and breaking down digital barriers means more people will feel confident using online health or social care services. We’ll have celebrated stories and highlighted programmes and resources that made a difference.

Enhanced collaboration and understanding of digital strategies: Our collaborative work, especially with bodies like the CDPS, and Digital Health and Care Wales has led to a digital strategy that’s help us make real improvements for you and your health and care experiences.

We want to be a trusted organisation that is valued by everyone – the people we serve and the partners we work with in Wales and beyond. We want to make sure every voice counts, as a champion of people-first engagement in Wales.

We want to be a well-run and value-based organisation that doesn’t just advocate for change but embodies it, setting the example for inclusivity in health and social care across Wales. We want Llais to be a great place to work, that tries new things and stays up to date with new ways of working.

To help us do this, in 2024-2025 we will:

Bring in two new IT systems, a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system and SharePoint - improving our record keeping and online spaces to help us work better and have a bigger impact. We will also create a Digital Data and IT Strategy to help guide us in years to come.

Create our locations strategy and our net zero carbon aim.
Review our main policies and procedures and update the way we do things, aiming to make our organisation even stronger and smarter about how we use our resources to make the biggest difference.

Introduce a new communication and PR strategy that will up how we talk about what we do, use new tools and launch impactful campaigns to share our story far and wide. We will tell you about our impact more often, we want to show how we’re making a difference in health and social care.

Introduce and embed our values, behaviours and culture through things like updating the ways we measure our performance, the way we recruit people, how our people have a say on the future of Llais and how we give feedback to each other.

Introduce our volunteer strategy, making volunteering with us even more rewarding and impactful. Creating more opportunities to volunteer than last year and more opportunities for development.

Take action to make Llais a welcoming place for all communities we serve. This includes taking forward our Strategic Equality Plan, our actions in the Anti-Racist Action Plan, the LGBTQ+ and Disabled People’s action plans. We will measure how well we’re doing and keep getting better.

Make the way we recruit people better so everyone involved tells us that the recruitment process is more effective and easier to use.

Roll out our learning and development programmes for our people and have 25% more people complete learning and development than last year.

We will review and update our website to make it easier to use and understand.

We will engage more and better by creating a new engagement framework and introduce and use new tools. We will take part in more national events, respond to important issues and make sure your voice is heard in big decisions by publicising, and responding, to more calls for evidence and consultation responses.

What could success look like by March 2025:

We’ve updated all our important rules and ways of doing things, making Llais run smoother and stronger. This big improvement is something we’re proud to show off in our yearly report and something our team really feels and appreciates in their day-to-day work.

Thanks to our big push on plans like the Strategic Equality Plan and actions to support LGBTQ+ , disabled people, and fight racism, Llais has become a place where more varied voices are heard.

We have started developing a culture that lives by its values. Success can be seen in our team’s higher engagement, job satisfaction, and the positive feedback loop between staff and management.

Our new communication and PR strategy, alongside a robust engagement framework, will have amplified our voice and impact within the health and social care sector. Success will mean our campaigns and engagements have led to real changes in policies and practices, our influence is clearly visible in improvements across health and social care services in Wales.

Successful integration of new IT systems, aligned with our Digital Data and IT Strategy, has enabled us to work more efficiently and have a greater impact. This, along with our smart planning on where we work and our goals to be greener, has made us more efficient and impactful.

The rollout of our development programmes and the improvement of our recruitment arrangements will have resulted in a more skilled, satisfied, and effectively recruited team.

We’ve opened up more chances for volunteers to join us, bringing new ideas and energy into Llais. Our volunteer strategy is a hit, making our mission even stronger with the help of these amazing contributors.