As a service manager, you can involve consumers throughout health service delivery and cancer care and control to build a responsive and trusted health system. In addition, involving consumers is an essential requirement of accreditation and reporting at the state and national levels, and is included in National Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS) Standards (Partnering with Consumers Standard).

You might discover that there is consumer engagement occurring in different areas of your organisation, but it has never been properly assessed or centralised. If your organisation has not recently assessed its consumer involvement, it is helpful to do so.

To develop a sustainable and efficient consumer involvement program, you will need a series of policies for working with consumers. Look at some of the policies you might think about developing for your organisation, if they don’t already exist (see Policies for high-level involvement).

Also see About consumer involvement and Getting started.