HWLincs VOICE Conference 2025
Lincolnshire Charity HWLincs celebrated and elevated the power of public voice at its first annual conference in Lincoln this week.
Health and social care professionals and community group leaders each shared pledges at the event, as well as ideas for how the sector can work better together to improve the wellbeing of people in Lincolnshire and beyond.
HWLincs was proud to host three keynote speakers on the day.
Rebecca Curtayne, External Affairs Manager at Healthwatch England, shared the importance of local voice being elevated to national level and the impact that has.
Martin Samuels, Executive Director for Adult Care and Community Wellbeing at Lincolnshire County Council explained the workings of adult care and its dedication to shaping services based on public voice.
Finally, Charley Blyth, Director of Communications and Engagement at NHS Lincolnshire Integrated Care Board, talked through how the ICB works to improve the health of people within the county and how public engagement plays a key role.
Charley even experienced a positive heckle during the presentation, when a member of the audience was moved to publicly praise the work of the Lincolnshire ICB.
Between speeches, people networked and forged links in the marketplace, with conversations about collaboration being at the heart of the topic.
Three workshops were also held throughout the day.
The Engaging with Seldom Heard Communities workshop was hosted by HWLincs and the NHS Lincolnshire ICB Health Inequalities Team. HWLincs contract and project manager Tom Cassidy presented the methods and findings from two recent engagement projects for the Care Quality Commission – people who sell sex and Gypsy, Roma, Traveller communities. James Allen, Health Inequalities Improvement Facilitator and Suzanne Marriott, Health Inequalities Engagement Manager, both from the NHS Lincolnshire Integrated Care Board, then shared the ways that their team is helping people who are socially excluded and face multiple interacting risk factors for poor health.
Elsewhere, a session titled Engagement to Insight had attendees observing how recent research translated public voice into positive change. Healthwatch Lincolnshire Contract Manager Dean Odell discussed four successful research projects and Sarah Bustin, Lincolnshire Maternity and Neonatal Programme Communications and Engagement Lead, shared how this work was used by the NHS’s newly produced maternity and neonatal materials.
The third workshop, Elevating Public Voice, was presented by HWLincs Chief Executive Officer Navaz Sutton, who shared HWLincs’ vision and encouraged attendees to share their own pledge, with the aim of forging stronger partnerships. The interactive workshop gave attendees the opportunity to share connections and explore how best to reach into more communities, based on the aspiration of gaining insights into the lived experience of more people across the county.
Celebrating the success of the charity’s first conference, Navaz said: “The day was a great success in bringing together the world of engagement and public voice from across Lincolnshire and beyond. With many conversations, guest speakers, workshops and networking taking place throughout the day, I was pleased to see everyone sharing and connecting.
“We talked a lot about collaboration and reaching communities, and I am excited to visit the pledges made by people on the day, everyone was positive about wanting more public voices to come forward and to work with us and each other to elevate lived experiences into the strategic conversations to bring about changes for the benefit of people and communities.
“As the first conference for HWLincs, I feel this will become a staple in the annual calendar as an opportunity to reflect on the collective impact we are all having. A sincere thank you goes out to everyone that spent the day with us and to those that delivered or contributed to the delivery. I now look forward to following up on the energy and commitment in the room to help drive a more collaborative future for public engagement.”
The slides from each presentation are available below and we will be sharing the findings from the workshops in the coming weeks.
Thank you again to everyone who came and made the HWLincs VOICE Conference 2025 a success.
Presentation slides:
HWLincs intro and Healthwatch England
Workshop: Engagement to Insight by HWLincs and NHS Lincolnshire Maternity and Neonatal Programme
Elevating Public Voice by HWLincs
Lincolnshire County Council and NHS Lincolnshire ICB
