Foreword

Building a safe, high-quality health care system means that people managing and working in the system need to work together with consumers and the community to achieve sustainable improvements and maintain public confidence in the system.

The Consumer Focus Collaboration publication series provides practical tools to support consumer and health care providers to achieve this goal. These tools have been developed through projects funded by the Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care.

The Consumer Focus Collaboration, established in 1997, has placed an important role in taking forward work on consumer participation at the national level. The Collaboration is a national body with representatives from consumer, professional and private sector organisations, and all health departments. Its aim is to strengthen the focus on consumers in health service planning, delivery, monitoring and evaluation in Australia.

The Collaboration is taking the lead in fostering an active partnership between consumers of health care and those who provide that care.

The resource guides, reports and issues papers that make up the publication series have been designed to provide health care consumers, service providers and managers with ideas and information about how to work together in partnerships.

Strengthening the voice of consumers in the health system requires a multi-pronged approach. This publication series reflects the commitment of the Consumer Focus Collaboration to provide strategic resources in a number of areas including education and training, building consumer capacity to participate, building provider capacity to respond to consumer need, and research into aspects of consumer involvement in health services.