Sadia Mir, member of our Public Engagement Advisory Group joins us on the latest episode of our podcast. The Group gives us feedback and ideas about how to make sure complainants get a high quality, empathetic and timely service from us.
Sadia speaks to our Outreach and Public Engagement Managet Sarah Ord and shares her experiences of:
- being a member of the group
- how the group improves the service of PHSO for the people that use it
- why it's so important to be involved.
Sarah Ord: Hello and welcome to Making Complaints Count, the podcast from the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, where we explore the power of complaints and how organisations can use them to learn and improve.
My name is Sarah Ord and I'm a manager in our Outreach and Public Engagement team, and I'm your host for this episode. Today, we're going to be talking with Sadia Mir, one of our Public Engagement Advisory Group members. But first I thought it'd be helpful to give a bit of background as to what our Public Engagement group is and why it was set up.
Our Public Engagement Advisory Group is currently made up of 15 members who are either former complainants who've used our service before or members of the public who've never used our service. We set up this group in early 2023 to help us improve our service. This group gives us feedback and ideas about how to make sure complainants get a high quality, empathetic and timely service from us. We meet every three months and rotate between online and in-person meetings.
Each meeting has a specific theme. Some of the topics the group has given us feedback on include:
- Empathy - what empathy is and how to make our communication more empathetic
- report writing - how we improve, how we write our final decisions
- how to improve our website content.
These are just a few examples of the many topics the group has given us feedback on. Members stay with the group for two years. We make sure we recruit members from varying backgrounds who have different experiences to share.
So today I'm going to be talking with Sadia Mir, one of our Public Engagement Advisory Group members. Hi, Sadia.
Sadia Mir: Hi everyone, I'm Sadia and it's lovely to be here today.
Sarah: Thank you for joining us on this podcast. Really great to see you and be chatting with you.
Just to start us off then, can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you first got involved with our Public Engagement Advisory Group?
Sadia: How long do we have? This always reminds me of when you start a new job and they're like, ‘Tell us one interesting fact about you.’ And I know loads of people hate it, but I'm the type of person who I have like tens of thousands of interesting facts. And I'm like, which one do I pick?
My journey into this type of work and what led me to this group is that I have two health conditions myself and whilst trying to figure out what to do after university, I stumbled upon public engagement as a general way of getting things done.
I started off in research, so working with researchers and giving my opinion as a member of the public on what could be done better. Through that work I built confidence and I was like, ‘Wow! People are actually listening to me.’
And through the experiences that I've lived, I actually have something beneficial to say and a lot of insight that I felt that could be very useful. And through those connections, I came to find out about the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman and they just so happened to be recruiting for this group at that time. I sent in an application that I honestly was not expecting to hear back from. I personally didn't think I had an amazing set of strengths that would fit in perfectly, but you came back to me and now I'm in and I am just so happy to be involved with this.
Sarah: That's great. So you've got really fab experience for our group and it sounds like you've got a lot of experience in public engagement too. And like seeing changes made, which is exactly what we're trying to do with the group. So just expanding on that then, what made you interested in joining a group like this? You mentioned that you've done other research projects. What was it about this group that made you think I want to join it?
Sadia: For me it definitely was what I saw as my big step. So the kind of work that I was doing was purely from ‘I am a member of the public and I have something I would like to say’. And after doing that for about three years I wanted that little bit of a change in terms of going from a member of the public to having something to say versus let's see how we can create that change.
And so I started to put my sight on like procedural change and structural change, which this fit in perfectly. So knowing that I can sit in the group, not only say what I am thinking but also the people of my communities, and then actually be able to enact that change - that is something that really led me to this group.
But also, I had never heard of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman before. The first time I heard of it was actually when I came across the application process for joining the group. And because I'd never heard of it before obviously I had to do a little bit research and look into it. And I was just astounded that I'd never heard of it in the first place. I thought what a useful service! How incredible is this? And if I'd known that existed, I probably would have used it when I was going through a few health struggles and didn't receive the level of service of care that I was expecting.
It would have been really helpful and because I'd literally just found out about it, I was asking my close friends and family: ‘Have you heard of this? Do you know what it is?’ And everyone was saying, ‘No, we've never heard of it before,’ which again was outstanding to me. How this can be such a helpful thing, but nobody in my near vicinity had heard of it.
So that really solidified for me that I have to apply because I’m an everyday person and I've not heard of it and I could have benefited from it. There's going to be a lot of people like me. That sound like me, talk like me, act like me. Going through things like me that also haven't heard of it. And so from that point of view, I thought I have to get involved because who better than someone like me to know how we can showcase this to other people like me who didn't know it existed.
Sarah: Yeah. And that's actually one of our aims to just raise awareness of our service. And I think the experience that you bring is perfect for us in getting some feedback. It's really important that we hear from former complainants, but also people who've never used our service or as you said people who didn't even know our service existed. We need to use those voices to improve our services internally. Just thinking about the group itself, how would you explain the dynamic of the group?
Sadia: I would say incredible. When I first joined I was really nervous. Obviously it's a new thing. You're meeting new people, but the first thing that I noticed when I walked into the room was that it wasn't homogeneous. It was people from all different backgrounds, walks of life, ages, ethnicities, religion. That for me is something that really shows whether a company is committed to making change or not.
So it was a relief when I walked in and I saw this beauty in difference which really made me happy and let me know that you guys are taking this seriously. And it was again for me as a young person, someone under 30 to see other young people there as well made me feel like I wasn't there as a token member. You're actually going to listen to me. You're going to put just as much importance on my opinion and my experiences as someone who's potentially older. But yeah, the group overall, I would say just supportive is the main thing I want to say. They were lovely.
I had some amazing conversations. Everybody was really open. Really friendly. Yeah, there's nothing bad that I could say about the group. I think out of a lot of the work that I've done, this was the easiest group of people to fall into and make friendships with and I really see myself working with them for a long period of time. I know once our two years are up, I very much see us all staying in contact, continuing to share the good work that we do and opportunities. So yeah, it's been incredible.
I love that we're all different in our own ways and we all bring a different perspective and everybody holds respect. That's something super important. Nobody was talking over each other. We gave each other space to speak. We tried to understand everyone's perspective.
And I just think when you have a group of people like the one that we have, you know that work is going to be done. Change is going to happen. You've selected people who are in and of themselves change and change makers.
And it's just a fantastic group. How can we not create something amazing when we have amazing people in the group?
Sarah: That's really positive to hear Sadia, and I think you mentioned something about beauty of difference and that's really something that we wanted to bring to the group.
We wanted to recruit people who have different experiences to share different voices. So I'm glad that shone through and I'm glad that that's been your experience. That's really positive to hear.
In terms of the activities and the things that we've done in the group, were there any activities or workshops that really stood out to you?
Sadia: I wasn't expecting this, but I really enjoyed the workshop that we did on looking at the website. So I am not amazing with technology - in terms of, yes, I grew up with it and I can type without looking at my keyboard - but ask me about formatting a website or anything like that, I am not your girl! I am there to read what is on the website and enjoy that. People can make something like this, but I myself am not good at that side of technology.
But I really enjoyed having a look at what it is right now and what it could be. And I learned through that, that I have really blue sky thinking, which sometimes is not the best thing I will admit. But I was like: ‘Wow, I'm getting all these ideas and I think this would be amazing. And this would be cute and this would be so eye-catching!’ and actually hearing that those things can be done, they're not the wildest thing in the world and whilst they might not necessarily fit in with the Ombudsman's work or the way we want to portray the website, they are still things that you can do. It was making the gears turn for me and my own potential website for work that I do.
But yeah, I very much enjoyed it when I wasn't expecting to, I thought for someone like me, it might be a little too difficult to know, I've never assessed someone's website before. But yeah, I had fun and I didn't feel like I was holding the group back by not having that initial knowledge. I felt encouraged to give my opinion. I was pointing out the colours, I was looking at, the text size. I was saying things like: ‘Oh, I want a picture here and would a banner be cute?’ And yeah, just the way that everybody was open to, not only hearing what I had to say, but actively bouncing off that and adding things to it. It felt less like I was critiquing something and more like I was collectively building something great. Which in turn made me feel great.
So yeah, I really loved that website session. Looking at it, looking at what we might want. And I think that was one of the very few workshops that I was like, we need more time on this. I'm not done yet. I have more ideas.
Sarah: Yeah, that's great. I remember that workshop and there were lots of brilliant ideas. And as you said, we're not kind of looking for people who are experts in building a website. We need people exactly like you in our group who are going to use the website, look at it and know what needs to change and what perhaps isn't clear.
So there's been some really great creative ideas that have come from the group and just things that we might never have come across internally as an organisation. It's great to get that different perspective and I think that's a great example of the benefits of the group really. So I'm pleased that was a bit of an interesting workshop for you.
In terms of learning from the group, what kind of things did you learn or gain from your experience personally or professionally?
Sadia: Well, I'll start off with professionally. Obviously, I learned about the Ombudsman service, seeing as I'd never heard of it before seeing the job advert, applying and then getting in. So obviously I did my own research before I applied to see what kind of place it was, what happens. I didn't want to go in completely blind, but you cannot learn everything by yourself. I felt like it was a complex system and for many it can appear to be that way. That's why we're here as a group. That's why we're making change.
But I have learned so much about not only the health service in general across the UK and all the different bodies that sit in that and everything that turns the cogs and the wheels to make sure we as a community are healthy, happy and thriving.
But also the parliamentary side, which coincidentally came at the perfect time because just after I started this work, I became involved in some campaigning for better rights to work for women. So learning about Parliament and all the systems there helped me in starting that work and continuing that work. So already I am seeing amazing benefits.
For me it's learning about those things and being able to learn in a safe environment. And what I mean by that is being able to ask questions, ask for demonstrations, ask for examples, and have someone literally go through step by step those examples with me. I found that really helpful as someone who learns that way, whereas when you're in traditional education or you're trying to learn something by yourself, you don't have that sounding board. You don't have someone who makes you feel comfortable asking things that you might think are silly. But actually there's never anything considered a silly question. So yeah, definitely being able to learn about it in that comfortable, safe manner.
And on a personal note, I'm a nosey person. I'm more than happy to say that I am as curious as curious can get. I have a background in history,that's what my degree is in. I then went into public engagement and health because I was curious. From there, I went into the art sector, I worked in a theatre because I was curious. So being able to go into a new area and be able to tap into that curiosity and not have it seen as a negative thing has been amazing. Like yes, I want to know what you guys do. I want to know how you help people. I want to know why people come to you and how we can work with people who come to you. And I want to know the role of the Ombudsman and how that fits in and how we can continue this cycle of goodness at the end of the day.
So being able to almost like be both personally and professionally curious and having it be a positive thing that brings positive change for me, I think is the most important part. Like who else can say you were the cat that got the cream and it was great at the same time.
Sarah: That's great Sadia. I think it's great for us to hear the benefits that you've got from it, because we get a lot of benefits from the group, but it's great to hear your experiences. And I think curiosity is a great skill for the group because we don't have all the answers. That's why we have the group. And so for you to kind of be curious about what we do, why we do it, is there any way that we can do it differently, is really helpful. It's what the group's all about. So yeah, that that's fab.
We've kind of talked about how it's benefited you, but from your perspective how do you think the group is benefiting the Ombudsman and the people who use our service?
Sadia: First and foremost, I think making the service simpler, that's our main goal. We know that everybody is not equal in this society in terms of access to the internet, for example, access to digital technologies, the ability to take time out to start a complaint, and many other things. So one person doing a complaint can be a very, very, very different journey to another person doing a complaint. So it's about being able to look at those individual circumstances and figure out how do we make this simpler, easier, less stressful, less time consuming.
And a great way that we can do that is by having the voices of many different people, which is why it's amazing that our group is people from all different walks of life, some people who've submitted a complaint, some people who haven't, and being able to go through these journeys together and bring our own life experience into it. And we are definitely making sure that results in a simpler service where people can get the help that they need quicker, easier, less stressful.
And I also think there's a little bit of something that I like to call ‘safe faith’, in that people who are maybe having issues when it comes to the health service or parliamentary service, knowing that they've got someone in their corner if something goes wrong. I think it can be very scary to need to make a complaint or even just knowing if it's something that you should be complaining about.
I know from my experiences as a young person, as a woman, as a South Asian, and as someone visibly Muslim, that sometimes you feel like you are ‘overreacting’, and I'm saying that with air quotes for people who cannot see this lovely video that we have. Because unfortunately the life experiences that you can have, the negative ones make you feel like, ‘Oh, I'm just overreacting. Like it's just me. It's just in my head.’
So knowing that you can go to someone and have it clarified that: ‘No. it's not just you. It's not in your head. That actually wasn't something that they were supposed to do,’ or ‘it was indeed something offensive,’ or ‘that's not how your care should have been. That was not right.’
Knowing that you have someone in your corner to back you up in a way. Give you that reassurance. Make sure that you're on the right line and then help you through that to get a resolution that you deserve because you didn't get the care that you deserved.
Knowing that you have someone in your corner, someone to back you up, someone to help you through that. I think it makes it safer and makes it easier to speak up about injustice, no matter how big or how small. Because if we as the public don't speak up as the everyday person, those small injustices, or what we perceive as small injustices, will continue to happen, and they'll get bigger and bigger and bigger. So why not use our experiences to make sure that someone like us doesn't have to go through that, doesn't have to sit with those uncomfortable feelings, those uncomfortable moments, those harmful moments.
So yeah, not only are we going to create a service for the Ombudsman that is better, easier and hopefully makes it simpler for not only the public, but for the workers at the Ombudsman as well. I think overall it makes - and I know this is again a little bit of blue sky thinking - but overall making communities a better place to be, a better place to live, a better place to work, because we have a good working system in place to make sure people are getting care that they deserve.
Sarah: Yeah, and just the simplicity aspect of it, that's a real part of how the group can benefit us, because we need to make sure that we're reaching people who've suffered injustices, but perhaps don't know we exist or don't come to us. And maybe we can make our processes simpler so that they can come to us. So that's exactly why the group exists, just to make our processes a bit simpler and to raise awareness to those groups so that's a good point.
I mentioned before, the group is made up of former complainants, but also members of the public who've never used our service, which is yourself. So why do you think it's important for us to involve members of the public who've never used our service?
Sadia: I think involving people who've never used the service, I think it's two-fold.
One, these people have probably never heard of the Ombudsman. The only way we can know why they haven't heard about the Ombudsman is to work with them, so work with people like me, ask me questions: ‘Why have you never heard of the Ombudsman? What did you think it was when you first heard about it? What do you now know it is now that you've worked with us for a little while?’
And just talking about well, in your day-to-day, does it ever come up? Do you see adverts? Is it ever talked about? If you've had people in your life who've had injustices throughout their health service or parliamentary service. Getting to know where those gaps in communication are. Or advertising, or public engagement, so that we can make sure that a greater number of people are aware of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman.
The second one is if you've never been through a process before, you're going in blind. Which means you don't have any prior knowledge of how to work that system. So someone like me who's never had a complaint, when you put that process in front of me, I have no prior knowledge on what to do to get through the system. No knowledge on how to word my complaint or tips and tricks that people might have shared in terms of if you do it this way or if you tweak it this way, or if you submit all these things in the first initial complaint, you might get seen sooner.
I don't have the knowledge of those things, so me going through it blind, you're going to get a better response as someone who is going through it for the first time. So if I find it difficult, it's because it is difficult, I've never worked with it before, I'd never seen it before. This is my honest opinion.
Whereas if you have someone who has been through the complaints process before, they've seen what it looks like, they've been through it. So there is that level of familiarity. So they might not have as many struggles because they might have learned from last time. They might have learned, for example, ‘Oh, if I include X, Y and Z at this stage then I don't have to go through stage X, Y and Z’ for example.
And so they have that little bit of background there. But also when you submit a complaint yourself, I imagine there is a lot of emotions going through that process. And emotions can be amazing and they can also be not amazing. They can fatigue you, they can tire you out. They can make things really difficult. They can stop you talking about things. They can make you speak through something or they may make you freeze up.
So it's a completely different experience when you're looking at something through an emotional lens and through something without an emotional lens. So as someone who's never submitted a complaint before, I'm able to look through the process without that emotional lens. So looking more at the, ‘Well this make sense. If I was in a situation, would I know what to do? What I need to submit, what I need to bring? Is the whole entire process linear? Is it not linear? Would I think that's the way to do it? Is this how I would have envisioned it?’
So there's plenty of benefit from having someone who hasn't had that initial process before. All these nuances from someone who lacks that familiarity and lacks that emotional edge, just to see that things are making sense. And I think pairing the two together, so people who haven't had a complaint before and people who have, you're able to almost cover the bases of every type of person that is going to or has made a complaint.
You've got the newbies, the people who are not new, people who are in the process of submitting a complaint, people who might have had one rejected and are doing another one or trying to see if it can get accepted. So many different things, many different walks of people and the most basic way to ensure that we include those different types of voices is by having people who've had that experience before and people who haven't.
Sarah: Yeah, that's exactly it. And I think both experiences are really important for us to hear. From people who've never used our service before and are looking at things from a fresh perspective and people who, as you say, have been through really traumatic events. And it's important that we hear from them too. So yeah, just both of them are really, really helpful voices.
You also represent young people as well. So why do you think it's important for young people to be involved?
Sadia: I can give you two answers. One, because we're amazing! You should love young people. All jokes aside, it's because young people, whether you like them, whether you hate them, we are the next generation. If we as young people are not aware of services like this, how will anyone else know about this? And this is not saying that we as young people, we are the beacon of information. What I'm saying is when we grow older, we might have kids of our own or we may be working in spaces with kids. If we are not actively telling people if something bad is happening to you, or if you're going through your health service or parliamentary service and things are not being done the way they should, and you're not getting a resolution, there is someone out there to help. There is specifically an organisation out there to help in these circumstances.
If we as young people are not aware of that, we are not passing that information on to future generations, which means less and less and less people know about the Ombudsman in general.
Secondly, we as young people have been through many, many, many, many changes that older generations haven't been through. We've grown up with technology. We have grown up with different types of community. We've grown up with a different economy. We've grown up with different health rules, health advice. We've also grown up with different life experiences such as, unfortunately, the pandemic. Being a young person during the pandemic is very different to not being a young person in the pandemic. So these experiences are something that’s very unique. Being able to bring them to the table I think just gives all the more benefit to the group and the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman.
Young people, we know what we're talking about! We might seem that we have a lot to say, but that is because we, like I said, we've had these experiences, we've grown up in different times. But also you know we're not dumb just because we're young, we know what we're talking about. We've had the experiences and we might catch things that other people might not catch. We can tell you if something that is written down is going to be interpreted in different way by young people. If that language is language that we no longer use, language that is offensive or no longer acceptable, or things that generally are just going out of fashion. We don't say that anymore. That doesn't have that connotation anymore. We've reclaimed that word and now it means something different.
But being able to ensure that we are communicating effectively, that we are looking at the world as it is now, looking at the trends that are out there, looking at the circumstances that people are in. The only way I feel we can get an accurate reflection of all of those things is by working with and listening to young people, because they are the people actively going through the world at the time that it is now. We don't have anything to compare to. We don't have, ‘Oh, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, 50 years ago, this is how it worked.’
We have no knowledge of that. We have now, this is how it works and this is why it's good and this is why it's bad and this is why it can be better.
Sarah: Yeah, it's an important group for us to hear from, definitely. And we do know that there's a lot of young people who aren't coming to us, perhaps they don't know we exist. For whatever reason, they're not bringing as many complaints to us as we would expect. So as a young person then, how do you think we can raise awareness of our service with those young people and make it easier for them to use our service?
Sadia: I think the main thing is shouting out about the work that we do. Obviously there’s confidentiality and not talking about people's personal complaints, but just letting people know that you as a service exist and some of the things that you do. And again, I really like that, as I was saying before, that person in your corner. I really see this service as that support system when things are going wrong, you have this support system. This organisation is here to help.
I really feel like leaning into that aspect and into that angle will be really beneficial, especially for young people as we are getting older, things are getting more difficult. Unfortunately, the economy is not doing so great. It's even harder to get a job and we may be earning slightly more in some cases, but our spending power is not what it could have been 30 years ago.
Knowing that we have all these things stacked against us, as young people going into this world now, there's a slight relief in knowing that there are certain organisations that can help us through this time. And injustices are one of those things that, unfortunately a lot of people go through and knowing that if I am going through it, or if I do in the future, I automatically know where to go if things aren't going right. It's just very reassuring and so definitely I would say we need to talk - not even talk, shout! We need to be shouting more about the benefits of using the service when you are in that situation and how to use it.
I would say for me personally, a lot of information that I have gotten as I've gotten older that I found really helpful was from university. I would definitely advocate that we go through universities and we have a system where we are letting people know at the ages that people visit university, that this is something that can help if you’re ever stuck or in a pickle.
And I know when it comes to young people, people always say use social media. That's where young people find out about everything. Yes, it's a great idea, but I would also say don't forget the importance of connection, personal connection, face to face connection. The power that the words of people around you have.
I am far more likely to believe, listen and take in information from my parents, from my family, from my close friends, from my colleagues, than one post that I've seen on social media. So having those conversations, making it easier and having the Ombudsman present in places that the everyday person is going to be, whether that's a young person, someone who's older, someone who is new, someone who is not new to the service, someone who feels like you'll never need the service, someone who thinks it's amazing that you've somehow figured out that this is exactly what they need at this time. Just that importance of connection and being able to support that chain of word of mouth. I think that's what we need to do.
Sarah: That's interesting. So from your perspective, it's not just about raising awareness with young people, t's about raising awareness in general and making more people aware of our service. And then that will in turn trickle down to young people as well. That's a really good point.
What would you say then to another young person who's thinking about joining the group?
Sadia: Take that leap of faith. Go for it. I think sometimes, especially the generation I'm from, I think we are a little bit defeated. We have gone through a lot, we've seen a lot and we hear a lot of bad news daily. So it can be hard to think that something good is going to come your way. But I would say yeah, take that leap of faith, apply, get involved. Send that e-mail because you never know what's going to come out of it. The worst that is going to happen is you don't get in, the best that is going to happen is that you get in and you help to make change and you are learning a load of new skills. You have a load of new experiences and you're meeting some very lovely people, so go for it.
It might be scary, it might be nerve-racking, but this is one of those groups where they want people like you. They need people like you, so go for it. You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to have all the skills in the world. This is not about: ‘We want perfect people to tell us what to do.’ This is ‘We want the everyday person,’ and ‘you my friend are the everyday person just by being here.’
Sarah: That's great PR for us! You're exactly right. We just need people from all different walks of life to help us within the group. So yeah, that that's a great message to put out there.
Just thinking a bit more of a reflective stance, what's one thing that you'll take with you going forward because of this group?
Sadia: Oh, that's a difficult one. I think there's a lot and I could probably be here all day and tell you all about them. So I'm going to pick one and I think that is going to be how to maintain conversations with people from all different walks of life.
And I know that might sound like that's something easy to do. But actually, when you have people with different experiences and sometimes conflicting experiences, as someone who tends to shy away from ‘conflict’. It's not a conflict, but having those opposing stories, it can be quite difficult to know what to say or when to chip in and how to show that you understand both perspectives and continue to give advice from that. I think it's a skill that you only really learn when you're put in those situations and knowing that I have been in those situations in a safe environment where I've been supported helps me not only figure out how to handle those conversations, but how to continue giving advice and supporting people through those conversations.
It's a skill that I can take with me anywhere and everywhere, whether that's in my professional life or in my personal life.
I think things that you can learn that are going to help in general are things that are far more beneficial than individual things that may only help you in your professional life or in this one job.
I would say definitely that scale of being able to navigate those types of situations without: a) feeling bad myself or b) making those who've shared their stories and experiences feel bad. So it’s definitely something that I don't think most people would think I would have learned or picked up through this work, but it is definitely something that I would love to highlight.
Sarah: That's really interesting. So Sadia, I think I could chat with you all day, but I think sadly we'll have to wrap up now. Thank you so much for coming on this podcast. It's been so great to chat with you about your experiences, your background and how you found your time on the advisory group.
It's been really brilliant to hear the positivity that you've talked about and how you feel that that we're making real change, which is really great for us to hear. So thank you, Sadia.
If you'd like to hear more about our engagement opportunities such as surveys, workshops or find out when we're next recruiting Public Engagement Advisory Group members, please e-mail public.engagement@ombudsman.org.uk.
That's all for this episode of Making Complaints Count. If you enjoyed this discussion, please subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss future ones.