Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) is looking for People’s Experience Volunteers, a new role designed to help them better include people’s views in their work.

They are looking for volunteers from across Scotland with a broad range of different experiences and identities; they are particularly keen to involve disabled people, people who are black, Asian or from a minority ethnic group or background, and people who are living on low incomes, due to the different impacts these factors can have on people’s health, and their different experiences of health and care.

HIS has a diverse programme of work, which aims to improve care and includes:

supporting people and communities to be engaged in shaping health and care services
carrying out inspections of health and social care services
supporting changes to make services better
gathering and sharing information that helps people get the most from the services they use and helps to make services better

People’s Experience Volunteers will help HIS include and be mindful of people’s different experiences of health and care, to make sure that public views are better represented in their work.

Volunteers will be asked to give feedback on specific questions about health and care; they will have opportunities to:

share their views on some of HIS’ ideas, improvements and work programmes to give them a better idea of what is important to people in local areas
help HIS find out how people read and understand their reports, websites or information about health and care
work with HIS when they are thinking about how to engage with people across Scotland on a topic or a change; volunteers can help shape and test questions, test understanding of the topic and discover what is most important to people

Volunteers do not need any specific skills, just an interest in making health and care better for everyone. All feedback will be anonymized, and HIS will make sure that it is not shared in a way that could identify volunteers.

For further information, including how to get involved with this opportunity, please view or download the Role Descriptor and poster as pdfs (both linked for your convenience).

Alternatively, for further information, contact Chris Third (who will be supporting People’s Experience Volunteers) by phone: 07929025816, or email: christopher.third@nhs.scot