Newsletter, May 2009

Contents this month

• Main article - Stakeholder engagement and other forbidden words
• Article - The Soviet Pioneer
• Project news
• New website for Dialogue by Design

Project News

Department of Health - Adult autism strategy

Dialogue by Design are running an online consultation on behalf of the Department of Health as part of their work to develop an autism strategy that tackles the barriers faced by adults with an autistic spectrum condition (ASC) and their families. The strategy will look at the needs of all adults with autism from across the spectrum (including Asperger syndrome and high functioning autism).

The consultation considers five key themes for delivering change - health, social inclusion, choice and control, awareness raising and training, and access to training and employment. The consultation runs from 29 April 2009 to 15 September 2009.

Visit the Department of Health consultation website for more information.

Environment Agency Workshops

A series of workshops have been held over the past two months on a number of different topics for the Environment Agency.

On the one hand many of the workshops were held with internal staff on the topics of Water Protection Zones, Rapid Response Catchments, and Construction. Workshops were also held on behalf of the Environment Agency with external stakeholders on the topics of Construction and Common Ground.

The workshops used a variety of techniques to encourage discussion and feedback including small group work, and carousel sessions. Some workshops had presentations to help inform the discussions and all workshops had some sessions run in plenary to ensure all participants came together at some point during the day to gain an overview of what the rest of the room was saying.

Wellcome Trust

Dialogue by Design designed and ran a workshop in February for a range of managers in the Wellcome Trust to consider their approach to public engagement on five key themes over the next few years. This covered Eating, Getting Older, Genes and Society, Mental Health and Epidemics and Pandemics. We explored these themes using a mixture of workshops, dramatisations, art work and presentations. The Trust will use the outcome of the workshop to inform future grant decisions. We have also just run a secondary workshop to this on the theme of Eating with Wellcome Trust Stakeholders.