Family and patient partnerships
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Learn more about getting involved, or send us feedback and suggestions.
Involving patients and families in health care improves outcomes for everyone. The Sydney Children's Hospital Network (SCHN) is committed to working with our patients and families in all that we do.
Your ideas and feedback help us improve our services and deliver safe, high quality care. We want to partner with you to create stronger relationships, support collaboration between patients, families, carers and staff, and shape our culture and direction.
How we engage patients and families
We have groups, councils and registers across the network to make sure patients and families' voices are heard.
- Youth Council: A youth advisory council for consumers aged 16 to 24 years old
- Families and Consumer Council: An advisory council for parents, carers and adult consumers
- Bear Cottage Family Advisory Group: Bear Cottage-specific parents and carers advisory council
- SCHN Research Consumers Register: A pool supporting recruitment and matching of consumers for research partnership activities
- Departmental research consumers register: Ongoing consumer involvement aligned to clinical programs and research areas
- Project-specific research consumers register: Targeted engagement for individual studies and codesign activities
Our engagement framework
We aim to provide patients and families opportunities to engage with and contribute to our activities, in line with the NSW Health and the International Association for Public Participation's (IAP2) Spectrum of Public Participation.
Below are examples of how we're meeting the IAP2 Spectrum's 5 levels of engagement: inform, consult, involve, collaborate and empower.
Inform
Our website:
- provides easy access to up-to-date health and hospital information
- enables families to share feedback, learn about partnership initiatives, and access educational resources.
Our factsheets and handbooks:
- provides easy access to evidence-based health information
- supports informed decision making and self-management.
Consult
- Patient-Reported Experience Measures (PREMs) capture patients’ and families’ voices at scale with inclusive and age-appropriate tools and approaches, to identify opportunities for service improvement.
- Wellbeing rounds provide face-to-face opportunity for patients and families to share their experiences, suggestions and needs directly with staff, ensuring their voices are heard in a timely way.
Involve
- Your Voice Matters pop-ups are designed to gather real-time, in-person feedback from patients, families, carers and visitors in high-traffic hospital settings.
- Families Online is an online group where parents and carers can give feedback on projects, services or resources, allowing flexible contribution without formal meetings.
Collaborate
- Families and Consumer Council and Youth Council allow parents, carers and young people to contribute to innovation and decision making.
- Consultation is embedded throughout our redevelopment planning, design and implementation, ensuring our new hospital facilities reflect the needs of patients and families.
Empower
- Kids Research Co-Researchers: Consumers partner with researchers in making decisions for design and conduct of research.
- Special events: Young people are invited to participate in organising activities for events such as Wear It Purple Day.
Learn about how our Quality, Safety and Patient Engagement Committee works with the Network Board to continuously improve quality of care and services delivered.
NSW Patient Survey Program
The NSW Patient Survey Program offers families and patients the opportunity to provide feedback about their experiences of care in the health system.
The survey program is managed by the Bureau of Health Information (BHI), a government organisation that produces independent reports and information about the performance of the NSW healthcare system.
The information is used to strengthen accountability and support system-wide and local improvements in patients’ healthcare experiences and outcomes.