How to influence decision makers

These resources have been designed to help you champion community rehabilitation by securing time with local healthcare decision makers

CSP members are our greatest assets and most effective advocates when it comes to engaging with decision makers. 

Members are best placed to articulate the challenges facing rehab and recovery services on the ground. 

Writing to, meeting with or petitioning local decision makers will help raise the profile of physiotherapy as a profession and improve outcomes for patients. 

Members can collect and use data and case studies that evidences the difference they make and the case for expansion. 

Engagement that members undertake will help build relationships, influence and momentum. All this can lead to positive change. 

Influencing, engaging and lobbying is about communicating with decision makers to change their minds on an issue or to request their assistance to help achieve a particular demand. 

The pandemic brought to the forefront how important physiotherapy services are, with rehabilitation now being given a greater priority by all four UK nations that it has been for years. We need to ensure this momentum continues. 

It is critical that we maintain pressure to remind politicians, planners and funders of community services of the importance of rehabilitation and physiotherapy. 

Our priorities

  • To gain political commitment to delivering universal access to rehabilitation to meet needs

  • To improve the quality of rehabilitation through better commissioning, planning and delivery

  • To create public awareness of an individual’s entitlement to rehabilitation
  • To increase the public's understanding of the importance of rehab and recovery.

We are calling on decision-makers to...

  1. Develop a national strategy for quality rehabilitation, making it an integral part of the healthcare system. 

  2. Expand and modernise rehabilitation services to meet the scale of need for both Covid-19 and non-Covid-19 related cases, with a focus on delivering in the community. 

  3. Grow the multi-disciplinary rehabilitation workforce, with the right skills and staff numbers needed. This must be included in a workforce plan. 

  4. Measure performance on how the rehabilitation service meets needs of their populations 

Download the resources to see how you can help us achieve these aims.