What is a Consumer Rep?
A consumer representative is someone who is endorsed by the Health Care Consumers' Association of the ACT (HCCA) to represent the views and interests of health consumers.
HCCA consumer representatives have experience of health services primarily as consumers of services. They commit to being well informed about relevant health issues and representing a broad range of consumer views by ensuring they are accountable to others through HCCA and/or other community groups.
For more information about consumer representation click to the Consumers' Health Forum of Australia (CHF) http://www.chf.org.au/ . Health Care Consumers' Association of the ACT Inc is a member of CHF, which is an independent member-based non-government organisation providing a national voice for health consumers.
Support
Consumer representation on health related committees and working groups is recognised as an effective strategy to improve the outcomes of the health care system for health consumers. Effective consumer representation ensures that the experiences and knowledge of people who use health care services informs policy, planning, service delivery and evaluation.
HCCA provides training and ongoing support to consumer representatives so that they can be effective in their role. It is important that consumer representatives have strong connections to consumer networks and have opportunities to talk to other consumers to ensure a broader perspective. HCCA provides a range of opportunities for this to happen, including:
- Regular forums for consumer representatives to report back to HCCA about their representative work, network with others and keep up to date on health policy developments;
- Facilitating mentoring relationships between representatives; and
- Information sessions, consultations and Health Issues Group meetings throughout the year.
The function of the Consumer Representatives Program is to nominate, support, train and coordinate consumer representatives for health committees to ensure that the views and interests of consumers are represented. HCCA supports consumer representatives by providing a range of resources including:
- Website (providing easy access to nomination forms, meeting report forms, fact sheets, guidelines, publications, submissions)
- Blog with topical issues
- Consumer Bites newsletter
- Support and networking fora
- Telephone support
The Consumers Health Forum of Australia also has a range of materials to support consumer representative and these are available on their website.
Experienced Consumer Representative and HCCA Executive Committee Member, Russell McGowan, has created some guidelines for representatives which can downloaded below. Thanks to Janne Graham for her input.
| Russell's roolz for reps.pdf | 102.85 KB | Download Details View |
Meeting reports
HCCA asks that you provide a report on your work as one of our network of representatives. This means we can keep up to date on the progress of your committee, provide you with the advice and assistance you need and keep other representatives and consumers informed of the issues that you are working on.
Ideally, you should report to HCCA following every meeting, but we understand that it is sometimes difficult to do this or not always necessary, so the timing of your report is at your discretion.