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Who's who?
The twelve Commissioners or jurors were recruited through community groups as a reflective sample of the Oldham population. We wanted people with an open mind, who had no previous experience of working for the NHS or as community leaders or as active LINk members.
They would reflect the oldham population ethnically and demographically. They would be gender balanced (we didn't quite manage that), and include people with long term conditions/disabilities as well as people in good health. Each District of Oldham would be represented, and where possible distinctive communities within those districts. A full membership list can be found here.
The job of the commission members was to:
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Listen to the evidence of the expert witnesses, making notes as needed.
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Through the Chair, ask questions of the witnesses to clarify or challenge what they have said.
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Work together, to draw conclusions from the evidence and questioning and bring these together in the final report.
Supporting the Commissioners was the lay Chair Peter Bennett. Unlike the other patient participants. Peter's role was to support the Commissioners in asking questions, chair discussions and make sure everyone had a voice.
Each of the witnesses had been asked to talk about a specific issue. Some of these were invited to talk about the 'mechanics' of how the health service works, some were specifically about Oldham, some were about different ways of thinking about or ensuring fairness and some are about different people's ideas of what fairness means. A list of the witnesses and their video evidence can be found here.
The LINk staff, Urula Hussain and Jade Czuba were on hand to assist the Commissioners and Chair in getting the most from the sessions including debriefing and recapping on what has been said, facilitating discussions and and assisting in bringing together the thoughts of the Commissioners for the final report.
The PCT staff, Mark Drury and Rosie Kingham were on hand to assist the witnesses, liaise with the venue, video the sessions and learn from the proceedings for the evaluation report