Our people and communities

“We need to listen, to learn by trying to understand other’s lived experiences, and we need to co-design the services that people and communities in Dorset need going forward. We need to work with others to help people not just live long, healthy lives, but long lives that add quality and that’s about personal happiness.”

A headshot of Patricia Miller
Patricia Miller OBE
Chief Executive
NHS Dorset

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Your stories, your lives, your communities

We want to be inspired by people, empower, and listen to help us to improve health and care services for the better. We want to help all people, to live longer, happier, and healthier lives. And this work starts with people and communities in Dorset. But it extends across everything that we do and where we live – putting patients, carers, and people in the driving seat. Together, we can make things better.

Seven ways we are thinking differently:

Dorset is a great place to live, work and grow up. But across Dorset where you live can affect how long you live, and how healthy you are. In some parts of Dorset, people live shorter lives, and struggle to get access to health and care services. We would like to give everyone the chance to have a happy, long, and healthy life – wherever they live in Dorset.

We want to change things from the ground up to make health and social care better in Dorset. Some people are frustrated because we have not done enough in the past to really listen to them, see things as they do, and make things better.

There are lots of different organisations in Dorset that can help in keeping you in good health and help when you are ill or need support. This can be different NHS services, the council, or the community and voluntary sector. We believe that all the organisations involved in health and caring for people in Dorset should work together more than they have in the past.

We want to make use of the skills of people, groups, and organisations. We have looked at what local people have been telling us over the last five years and have used this to describe how we can work better with people and communities. We have listened to what you have told us. And we will:

  • keep listening to the voices of people and communities so that we find out what matters to people;
  • work to make sure all communities have a voice and have their needs understood;
  • ensure all local people’s views are at the centre of decision making.

We want to listen, hear, and tell your stories about your everyday lives so that we can make better decisions every day and get the big decisions right.

We will work to see if we are making a difference, not only by looking at facts and figures, but also asking people how well we are doing. We want to hear from you.

We will use plain language to make what we do clear. Let us know if we are not doing this well or could do better.