Sands: lobbying hospital trusts for better bereavement care
We worked with baby loss charity Sands, to help them put supporters in touch with their local NHS chief executive to ask that staff across their trust can access vital bereavement care training.
Sensitive care and support are vital for grieving parents experiencing the pain of losing a baby, but Sands research showed that only 12% of NHS trusts and boards across the UK give their staff time in working hours to attend specialist bereavement care training.
Connecting supporters with the right local target
The UK’s health system is complex; most people don’t know the name of their local hospital trust or health board, and it’s not straightforward to map via postcode.
We worked with Sands, using licensed and publicly available data, to build a custom dataset which connected people with their local NHS Chief Executive via a piece of information supporters would know - the name of their local hospital. Supporters could just start typing the name, and be offered a list of matching hospital names for them to select from via autocomplete.
Driving change at a local level
Over 1000 emails were sent, reaching 92% of the Trusts and Boards which provide maternity services. About half responded to the emails, and some of the Boards have followed up directly about how Sands can help them improve their bereavement care training.
Says Jess Reeves, Head of Public Affairs and Campaigns, “ The NHS is a complicated organisation, and it’s pretty difficult for most people to know who to approach or who has power to make change. Asking people for the name of their local hospital - something most people will know - made the action straightforward and empowering for our supporters by connecting them with the right decision makers in their local area.”
Localised targeting and campaigning
As well as the facility to load your own target datasets, Impact Stack offers a range of postcode-mapped UK datasets to allow you to put your supporters in touch with decision makers in their area. These include MPs, MSPs, MSs, MLAs, Council Leaders, Ward Councillors and GLA members. More info on our ready-to-use datasets here.
If you have ideas for additional datasets you’d like to see, please let us know.
You can see more examples of creative actions like this one in our webinar Innovative digital campaign actions.
