New Year meeting 2020

“MIND”, “Leder(in)”, the Patient Federation (“Patientenfederatie”) and “PGOsupport” organised a New Year meeting on 15th January on collective advocacy, decision-making and participation.

During this meeting, we looked back on 5 years of decentralization, together with experts and stakeholders. We evaluated and we looked to the future. What is the situation now with collective advocacy? Can collective advocates make their voices heard, nationally and locally? We examined whether the important objective of the changes had been achieved, namely to promote people’s involvement in the decision-making process. Has the intended collective participation been achieved sufficiently?

The meeting was opened by Anke Siegers and then a presentation was given by Prof. Dr. Jet Bussenmaker from The Dutch Council for Health and Society. Jet Bussemaker’s presentation can be found via this link: https://iederin.nl/samen-beslissen-in-het-tweede-decennium/.

We then started to work on a joint document for the coming 5 years. How are we going to make “involvement in the decision-making process” the new standard in care, welfare and participation?

1. By this we mean the collective voice in healthcare, at institutions and providers, and also in the social domain.
2. For policy-making, this is about inputting the expertise and know-how of those affected, in the design, implementation and evaluation.
3. It is also about collective representation and advocacy in those places where policy is made and implemented.

We will collate the results of this evaluation in a pamphlet. We plan to use this pamphlet as a basis to strengthen the position of people and to put them on the agenda of various political parties in the run-up to the elections in 2021.