The Design Principles

What we focused on when developing our strategy

Before we began we needed to be clear about what we wanted to achieve. We asked a broad cross section of people what was important to ensure the wellbeing of our population, including:

• people who deliver services, such as nurses, doctors, therapists and pharmacists;
• people who have experienced our services, such as patients, carers or partners;  
• providers of social care;
• charitable organisations who deliver support at all stages of an illness.

These are some of the most common words that we heard in reply:

Four common themes emerged:

The importance of changing the “balance of power” between those that use and those that provide health care services was also clear from these discussions.  These 5 themes have become the principles by which the Shaping our Future Wellbeing strategy will develop different ways of caring for people and keeping them well.