We have worked with Papworth Hospital throughout, and since, its application for foundation trust status.

The work initially involved recruiting members to the trust to ensure a balanced and representative membership community. The trust faces particular issues as a specialist hospital serving the East of England and the rest of the UK.

In a short space of time, we ran targeted recruitment campaigns to recruit members to the trust and to redress imbalances in the membership profile. We employed a variety of methods including face to face and telephone contact, exploiting external events, using community networks, and working with volunteers.

Further work involved developing the trust’s membership community and, in particular, increasing membership amongst women, black and minority ethnic communities, and younger people.

This work included:

ensuring that planned activities both on and off the trust site (such as the local annual fair and the East of England county show) are exploited fully to promote Papworth’s status as an NHS foundation trust and to help to redress any imbalance in the membership;
specific initiatives to recruit from the target groups, eg. benchmarking studies;
identifying target communities; working with partner agencies;
a pioneering pilot project to establish and support a group of membership champions for the trust, who act as advocates to increase membership in a sustainable and cost-effective way.

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