National Voices

202 Hatton Square
16 Baldwins Gardens
London
EC1N 7RJ

Tel: 020 3176 0738
Web: www.nationalvoices.org.uk

The Long-term Conditions Alliance and National Voices merged on 17 October 2008 to create one unified umbrella charity called National Voices representing service users and carers in health and social care policy-making nationwide.

What is National Voices?

• National Voices is an umbrella group for national voluntary organisations representing users of health and social care in England.
• It was established by key players in the voluntary sector to address the gap between rhetoric and practice in user led policy.
• National Voices works with policy-makers in Westminster and Whitehall to make sure that the voices of patients, carers and service users are heard and that their diverse needs and preferences are genuinely placed at the heart of policy development.

What does National Voices do that’s different?

• National Voices places people at the heart of national policy-making by involving the organisations that represent them in the policy-making process.
• National Voices looks at both health and social care issues not just one or the other.
• National Voices represents all service users including those with long term conditions, young people, older people, people with disabilities, carers, minority and ethnic groups and those who find it hard to be heard by policy-makers.
• National Voices looks at every issue from the individual’s perspective, regardless of who they are or the condition they have and by bringing the voices of users together aims to increase the impact that they can make on policy-making at national level.
• Essentially it aims to promote services shaped by what service users really need, not by what policy-makers think they need.