Final day of the ALLIANCE Annual Conference 2020

Catch up on all the activity from the ALLIANCE's first online and week-long conference, 7 - 11 September 2020.

Vision: Reimagining the future of health and care, our first-ever online and week-long annual conference saw over 1,000 people tune in to see 25 events with over 50 speakers throughout the week.

Events on the final day

We started our final day of the conference with a virtual ‘Walking podcast: in alliance with nature, ourselves and others‘, guided by outdoors specialist Will Manners who prompted us to notice the seasonal changes taking place all around us. You can listen to the full podcast on Anchor FM (this link will take you away from our website).

Engagement Insights: what is engagement?

The first event in a series of ‘Engagement Insights’ was held on Friday morning to look at what Engagement is, what it means to engage, and how engagement can inform and shape the “New Reality” around lived experience. The event included participant discussion and a key take away from this is that a lot of people are let down by engagement, which can be seen as worse than no engagement at all. Structural change is needed in all organisations, especially at the top hierarchical level, to change attitudes towards co-production. Sometimes, engagement is about simple, but often neglected, things such as inclusive communications and resources, being respectful and polite and collating best practice.

“Enjoyed this mornings session on Engagement with speakers and lots of discussions in our workshop breakout rooms“.

Exploring a National Care Service

Pennie Taylor begins a discussion with Derek Feeley by saying that the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the social care sector’s vulnerability, but proven it’s “utter necessity”. Derek Feeley tells us that the advisory panel has “deep and genuine expertise” but also in many cases a personal connection to the topic. His own desire to be part of his parents’ care support system was the main reason for returning from the USA as President of IHI. Derek said the review will seek to build on the wealth of existing research and work that has been done on the subject. They are eager to learn from innovations and ideas that are around and identify the things that need to be changed.

“Throughout this process, we will diligently and deliberately engage with anyone who wants to engage with us, and I will personally prioritise engaging with unpaid carers.” Derek Feeley

Watch the full interview with Derek Feeley on the National Care Service on our YouTube (this link will take you away from our website).

We closed the week-long conference with a live sing-along with Skin, lead vocalist at the Scottish band Hipsway

ALLIANCE Chief Executive Ian Welsh began thanking everyone for getting involved in our virtual conference this year, before Tommy Whitelaw introduced Skin. Skin performed Long White Care and Heroes live, dedicating the song Heroes to all the families, carers, health workers, and people across Scotland.

“Fantastic! Thank you so much for doing this“.

Feedback 

“I have enjoyed attending the ALLIANCE’s virtual conference throughout this week. Well done to all involved and especially your tech team who have made things seem so seamlessly with the webinars and zoom. Had a great opportunity to network and probably the first time for a while where I have met so many people at the same time. Feeling energised, motivated and lovely to hear about the compassion in our sector and why we do what we do and forever seeking to do things better.”

Event sponsor – deafscotland

Some events throughout the week included BSL/English interpreters and electronic note-takers, thanks to deafscotland for making our communication at these events accessible.

“Great to see accessible formats happening. Well done to all involved, thank you.”

All activity from 7 – 11 September 2020

If you missed any activity last week you can catch up on the recorded events on our YouTube (this link will take you away from our website), or find out more about the activity from Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Follow #ALLIANCEConf20 on Twitter for the week’s activity (this link will take you away from our website).

To watch interviews with leaders from Brothers in Arms and Thrive cover men’s mental health and the statistic that male suicide is the single biggest killer of men in the UK under the age of 45, visit the ALLIANCE’s Instagram TV (this link will take you away from our website).

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