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Dear PiF members

I am writing to ask for your help regarding some work I am undertaking for the Widening Participation in Learning Unit at the Department of Health. We wish to explore ‘what patients think of support staff’. By support staff, we mean ancillary staff in pay bands 1-4 (excluding health care assistants). This includes porters, receptionists, caterers, cleaners, security guards, etc.

This work should lead to recommendations regarding the ‘essential capabilities’ or ‘standards’ that should apply to the role of support staff. It should also lead to work to build the capacity of support staff, for example designing programmes of learning and development.

In particular, we would like to find out the answers to the following sorts of questions:
- What sort of experiences do patients have of support staff?
- What do patients expect of support staff?
- What sort of standards should they meet from a patient perspective?
- What do local patients think are priority areas for improvement?
- What training patients think support staff have?
- What training patients think they should have?

There are three things that I wanted to ask you at this stage:


1. Do you know relevant work being carried out? If so, please send details.

Are you aware of any work carried out that might throw light on any of the above questions? This might be at national or local level. It might be a research study or a consultation? It might be derived indirectly from other studies or data on staff. We are already looking at the national programme for patient and staff survey. But if you have done local equivalent work, we would be interested to hear about it.


2. Do you have a view? If so, please let us know.

If you are someone who has done work in this area, or are someone who feels they can provide some views on this subject, might you be interested in taking part in a short (30 min) telephone interview to gather your views? You may, for example, be a patient representative who understands your community’s views, or a member of staff who has strong views on the subject!


3. THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT BIT: Can you help us find patients, carers or staff to talk to? If so, please get back in touch.

We are sadly aware that little has been done to gather the views of patients about this part of the workforce which constitutes some 600,000 staff. We want to hold informal discussions with patients, carers, staff (both support and non-support staff) about their views. If you have access to an ongoing user group, or if you know of any other opportunities to hold such a discussion (e.g. a regular patient group meeting), please let me know.

I would very much appreciate your help on this important and unique piece of work. Please get back to me before Friday 18th January 2008 or even before!

Contact me on: 07917 13 50 48 or on davidgilbert43@yahoo.co.uk

Many thanks in advance for your help.

With best wishes


David Gilbert