Multiple care groups

Team: Wirral Learning Disability Children and Young People’s Mental Health Services
Contact: debbie.harrop1@nhs.net​​

What did we want to achieve?

The team wanted to improve the uptake and quality of annual health checks (AHCs) for young people with learning disabilities age 14 to 17, looked-after children, people from areas of higher deprivation, and people from the ethnic minority communities to support engagement with learning disability annual health checks. The group explored how specialist expertise and experience can complement existing service provision. The key element was facilitating the employment of a parent carer peer support worker with lived experience, to reach out to parents, carers and young people and understand how best to support them to access their AHC.

What we did

The model of parent and carer peer support was parent-led, through professionally-supported lived experience. The team built strong partnerships with third sector organisations, NHS and education across Wirral. The target groups were already connected to lots of relevant organisations and these organisations were able to help promote the peer support worker resource. There was significant sharing of health passports through the existing support offer and the team ensured an understanding of reasonable adjustments with every parent and carer, including how to ask for them. The Positivitree’s acquired knowledge of learning disabilities, AHCs and upcoming autism AHCs will continue to inform parents and carers, and help to maintain uptake of appointments.

Results

• Increased awareness and uptake of AHCs.
• Wide dissemination and sharing – autism fair, Big Learn event, awareness weeks.
• AHCs embedded into emergency healthcare plan (EHCP) transition reviews.
• Close liaison and joint working with primary care and the local acute NHS trust.
• AHC roadshows.
• Reasonable adjustment pantry - a resource bank including various types of resources that will support children and young people regarding any unmet health needs identified during AHCs.
• NHS England AHC webinar (May 2023).

Percentage of 14 to 17-year-olds in Wirral accessing AHCs:

• 2020 – 29.93%
• 2021 – 41%
• 2022 – 49.5%
• 2023 – 62.3%

Next steps

To liaise with Special Education Needs and Disabilities (SEND) review team to maintain an overview of the progress of the AHCs being embedded and discussed routinely if appropriate, as part of the EHCP annual review from year nine onwards. The team will work with the local authority on the new local offer website (SENDLO) - ensuring the topic of AHCs is included. Parent and carer AHC workshops will be hosted, as well as drop-ins at housing associations to promote AHCs. Learning from the project has shown that parent and carer peer supporters engage well with parents, and parents trust them due to their shared experiences. The project has also shown the positive impact of learning disability nurse leadership in working with parent and carers as peer supporters, as well as voluntary and community organisations.

Team: Wirral Business and Governance Team
Contact: ian.winton@nhs.net ​​​​ 

What did we want to achieve?

Cheshire and Wirral Partnership is signed up to the NHS England (NHSE) standards with the goal to ‘provide better working environments, free of discrimination, for those who work in the NHS, while meeting the requirements of the Equality Act 2010’. The Equality Delivery System (EDS) was developed by the NHS, for the NHS, taking inspiration from existing work and good practice.

Previously staff were encouraged to complete a template when they had demonstrated one or more of these standards. These were emailed to the Wirral Business and Governance Team to be logged on a spreadsheet and reviewed quarterly when a submission to NHSE was due. The Business Information Officer (BIO) took over the responsibility of cataloguing these submissions on a spreadsheet which was filled with valuable information on service improvement, patient care and demonstration of CWP’s Trust values. The BIO felt that this information was too valuable to remain unseen so looked for ways to share this in a more straightforward and accessible way.

What we did

Firstly, the BIO met with the equality, diversity, and inclusion (ED&I) leads to discuss their intentions to bring the ED&I data into the staff forum. During this process, having staff add their own submissions to the library was discussed.

The BIO then spoke with the SharePoint team and explained the requirements of the project, who then helped to create a space to add these submissions for staff to see. The BIO created an online questionnaire for staff to enter their submissions on, which automatically uploads to the online library. Staff can access this via their CWP computers and mobile devices via either a link on the intranet or via a QR code. The BIO attended local ED&I meetings to promote this library and its uses. A video was also created to guide staff through adding an entry to the online library.

Results

Following these meetings, staff began to make their entries into the library, which was saved into an easy-access library. The form creates a ‘word cloud’ of the most common phrases and answers, which gives an accessible overview of feedback.

Next steps

The next stage is to continue to promote the tool for use in inpatient services to ensure information can continue to be shared to improve the recording of ED&I work and share best practice.

Team: Earlybird Programme Team
Contact: bethan.eagles@nhs.net​​​​

What did we want to achieve?

The team wanted to offer a targeted, adapted early intervention approach for parents of children with a severe learning disability and an autism diagnosis. Earlybird is a licensed parent training course devised by the National Autistic Society. This approach aims to empower parents and develop their skills to better understand and manage their child’s behaviour. The course offers techniques and strategies to prevent the severity of challenging behaviours seen in older children referred into CWP’s learning disability services. Parents are often isolated and have voiced how Earlybird has given them opportunity to meet other parents to share experiences.

What we did

In 2011, the team completed a three-day training course with the Earlybird centre in Barnsley. In order to share knowledge and skills, each course was ran with a facilitator from both teams. Over time, workloads and staff vacancies decreased the number of facilitators, so in order to preserve this valuable resource, the team decided to target the parents of children who meet the criteria for the Learning Disability Children and Young People’s Mental Health Service (CYPMHS) team and the All-Age Disability Service children’s team. Referrals were sought from complex special needs schools, and from disability social workers to ensure that the intervention could be offered to the families who needed it the most. Three courses can be offered per year for up to 18 children (two parents per child can attend).

Results

Outstanding parent feedback has been received via evaluation forms completed after each session. Parents have reported that this is a parenting course, which understands the needs of having a child with a severe learning disability and autism. Parents feedback that they valued meeting other parents in a similar situation. Parents have formed relationships and continued to meet up after the course finished, and have shown through session feedback that they have adopted some of the advice and strategies learnt.

Parent feedback has included:

• “Invaluable amounts of information regarding behaviour and communication - so incredibly helpful.”
• “Great to talk everything through. Fabulous leaders with great understanding of how our autistic child views the world. Fantastic to meet other parents and share stories. Great strategies for looking after children moving forward.”

Next steps

Post-COVID, the team now runs the courses regularly and has two new members of staff who will cofacilitate future courses. The team has established links with parent support workers within the complex special needs schools who continue to identify children with significant challenging behaviours and refer them for the intervention. The team would like to be in a position to include parents with lived experience to share knowledge within future groups, alongside other professionals such as occupational therapists. Families continue to be signposted to other services for ongoing support and the team continues to refresh their knowledge of what support and activities are available.

Team: Mental Health Law Team
Contact: jan.devine@nhs.net ​​​​​

What did we want to achieve?

Following the implementation of Thalamos Mental Health Act (MHA) software solution across CWP during and after the pandemic, there has been an increased national focus to drive forward digitisation of the MHA. CWP wanted to be at the forefront, building on benefits realised, using technological advances and user feedback to support a new and improved recording and monitoring system. The Mental Health Law Team also wanted to improve reporting at an organisational level to maximise compliance with MHA legislation to improve legal safeguards for people accessing care.

What we did

The team listened to feedback from clinical teams, putting forward recommendations for change. This resulted in the development of Thalamos Electronic Mental Health Act (eMHA), the benefits of which were presented to the Quality Committee and the Clinical Systems Information Group. To ensure effective roll-out, the team engaged with CWP users and local authorities, holding an interactive test session to ensure eMHA met the requirements. An implementation project group was set up, process mapping sessions held, and user guides developed. The team supported the development of e-learning packages, making them available on CWP’s Virtual Academy online learning platform. Users can download an icon to any Trust device, enabling quick access to eMHA. The Mental Health Law Team intranet page has been enhanced, providing information and user guidance for staff 24/7. They have also engaged with Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust to roll-out eMHA.

Results

The introduction of eMHA has fully digitised the MHA pathway. All statutory forms are now available, including the non-statutory discharge form. Multiple professionals involved in the MHA pathway can securely see completed documentation. The Mental Health Law Team, having oversight of all caseloads, can access all activity on Thalamos, meaning forms do not end up getting lost in an email. Patient information is established on eMHA, enabling forms to be pre-populated, reducing time to complete forms and the number of errors. Since the implementation of Thalamos, no unlawful detentions due to incomplete digital paperwork have been reported. Analysis of data between 1 October 2023 and 26 February 2024 (pre-full implementation of eMHA) identified 25 errors requiring amendments under section 15 of the MHA; eMHA would mitigate all these errors. However, if needed, a form can now be amended without the need to complete a new form.

Next steps

The Mental Health Law Team continues to evaluate the benefits of digitising the MHA. eMHA provides a dashboard, enabling further analysis on the use of MHA which, over time, will inform service developments. The 12-month plan is to continue as members of the national users steering groups, sharing experiences, and taking a collaborative approach to improve product functionality. The team also plans to continue working with regional groups to explore the use of eMHA for the use of Section 136 of the MHA. They aim to expand the use of eMHA within acute NHS trusts across CWP’s footprint. The Mental Health Law Manager has been invited to work with the Professional Record Standards Body, to develop information standards supporting the transition to digitisation.

The team has been recognised for their efforts nationally; shortlisted in two categories at this year’s Health Service Journal Patient Safety Awards - Early-Stage Patient Safety Innovation of the Year and Safety Improvement through Technology. The winners will be announced on 16 September 2024 at a ceremony in Manchester. 

Team: Safe Services
Contact: leona.christopher@nhs.net​​​​​

What did we want to achieve?

The Safe Services team wanted to use the Measurement and Monitoring of Safety Framework (MMSF), developed by Professor Charles Vincent and colleagues for the Health Foundation, to create a patient safety dashboard that provides frontline teams with the breadth of available safety data, accessible in one place.

The MMSF looks at patient safety through five domains, including the safety of care in real time (sensitivity to operations) and forecasting safety (anticipation and preparedness). Within each domain, the team wanted to include measures that were important to each ward which, through active management and improvement, would help them in improving their safety. They wanted the dashboard to be clinically-led by the ward teams, empowering them to improve safety daily, whilst making longer-term improvements.

What we did

Working with the Performance and Information team, the Safe Services team identified key measures to be built into the dashboard using Power BI. One of the acute admission wards was chosen to pilot the dashboard with, initially involving the ward manager, clinical lead and consultant. The type of measures they would like to include were discussed with the ward team, as well as how they would be able to manage and improve safety using them.

The dashboard was initially set up to be manually refreshed each week by the Performance and Information team. The previous week’s data was also shown as a comparison. Each week the Safe Services team met briefly with the ward team to review their data and plan out the week. Plan, do, study, act (PDSA) quality improvement cycles were used to continuously review how well the dashboard was working.

Results

The feedback from the pilot ward was positive and indicated the desired aim of the initiative was being met. It allowed focus on specific safety matters that might not be consistently paid attention to, due to the information being disparate, and enabled the team to prioritise other safety work that they might not usually have capacity to look at, due to a typical focus on the management of safety incidents. The team fed back the following:

• “Nursing can be very qualitative, but it’s nice to pull the quantitative aspects through.”
• “It shows good practice and how hard the team is working, which is fed back to them and always goes down well!”
• “It’s nice to have comparisons from week to week. The layout of graphs is helpful allowing us to understand the information.”

Next steps

Since the pilot, the Safe Services team has started work with other wards. Because the team is using PDSA cycles of continuous improvement, the dashboard has been adapted so that it is refreshed automatically every day. This provides wards with near real-time information and is working well. The longer-term plan is to roll out the dashboard to all wards within the next 12 months, whilst also starting to work with CWP’s community teams to develop meaningful patient safety dashboards for them.

Team: ICT Services / Office 365 Project Team
Contact: helen.peggs1@nhs.net​​​​​​

What did we want to achieve?

The aim was to adopt Microsoft Office 365 automation tools within CWP to deliver appropriate and functional process automations in a variety of different scenarios using Power Automate and Power Apps. The project team was keen to utilise available technologies to support service delivery in new ways, to reduce effort involved in repetitive tasks and minimise the risk of manual errors. The pilot set out to:

• Identify appropriate use cases from both clinical care groups and clinical support services.
• Build technical competence within ICT Services.
• Develop a governance framework.
• Gather feedback on benefits to gauge effectiveness and inform next steps.

What we did

• Clinical referral automation (children and young people in Wirral and step 4 and adult autism and ADHD) – a referral form is completed via CWP website, which automatically emails referral to a shared, secure mailbox. The form cannot be submitted incomplete or by GP practices that should not refer to CWP.
• Staff search app – this enables staff to find colleagues, as well as add and update their contact details and work pattern from the intranet homepage.
• Case study submission to EDS2 – the team replaced manual form completion and data extraction. A Microsoft Form has replaced a Word document that was emailed back and forth. An automation takes the data and populates a SharePoint list accessible directly by the Information team for national reporting.
• Multi-factor authentication (MFA) – automation has been used to support the rollout of this critical security improvement, enabling deployment groups to be selected and emailed, cross referencing several data sources.

Results

Referral automation for children and young people facilitated 611 referrals in first six months. This has reduced admin and clinical burden, as there is no need to post or scan referral proformas or chase missing information. The risk of data loss has been minimised, with addition of an audit log of submissions available to the service. The staff search app provides information about how to contact colleagues, including finding an alternative contact by pulling through information from ESR. Feedback from the case study submission to EDS2 indicated it was simple to use and took a lot less time than the previous Word documents, and that it is now clearer how to report the impact of the adjustments on the service user’s experience. The new process typically saves three hours per week for the team. The MFA Trust-wide rollout was accelerated using automation tools. Using a traditional approach, the progress was slow but once the automations were in place, the pace was accelerated beyond initial forecast, allowing a faster compliance with a national deadline.

Next steps

The pilot has been extended to enable the project team to continue to learn, review benefits in greater detail. This is intended to inform the development of an appropriate operating model and identify types of use cases that will add most value within CWP service provision.

Team: Sustainability Team
Contact: veda.carter@nhs.net ​​​​​

What did we want to achieve?

The formation of the CWP Green Network coincided with the founding of CWP’s Sustainability Subcommittee in June 2022. The aim was to establish a network of staff from all professional backgrounds across CWP’s footprint, united by a desire to work towards sustainable healthcare, through expansion of the network, as well as:

• Education, engagement and culture shift – promoting awareness of the impact healthcare has on the environment.
• Solidarity - moral support for those who might otherwise have felt like a lone voice.
• Empowerment - enabling all to see how they can make a difference.
• Motivation - galvanising people within the network to act and influence those around them.

What we did

The network conducted bimonthly online meetings, shared messages, polls and conducted resource-sharing on Microsoft Teams. Face-to-face socials were also held and the network had representation at CWP’s Marketplace and Sustainability Subcommittee meetings.

Results

• Promoted ‘No Mow May’ in May 2023.
• Took part in Bring a Plant to Work Week, plus plant swaps.
• Joined the Liverpool to Chester to Liverpool bike ride.
• Green Network bike ride in Wirral.
• Attended Sustainable Cheshire festival.
• Clothes swap events at Bowmere Hospital, Sycamore House, Springview Hospital, including a permanent fixture in Sycamore House entrance.
• Elimination of disposable cups on Maple and Cherry wards, to be rolled out across the Trust in all areas where it is feasible to provide reusable cups.
• Tree planting at Soss Moss and hedgerow planting at the Stein Centre.
• Sustainability-themed educational afternoon in February 2024, with an overall feedback rating of 4.8 out of 5. Anonymous feedback on session on climate change and migration included:
  “I thoroughly enjoyed the talk. It changed my perspective completely towards migration. This is one of the talks I’ll remember forever.”
• Organised litter-pick in Chester in March 2024.
• Promoting the ‘Big Plastic Count’.
• Ongoing promotion of cycling, lift-sharing and reusable mugs at educational sessions.
• Green Network membership increased from approximately 40 in Dec 2022 to more than 170 in March 2024.

Next steps

The network has a sustainability calendar, with a wide range of events to foster a connection with the natural world in CWP’s work and day-to-day activities. One of the main focuses for the coming year is a reduction in waste and an improvement in recycling rates across the Trust (CWP’s waste is segregated and partially recycled by B&M waste management service, but rates could be improved through segregation at source and a reduction in use of disposable plastic). The network will also continue to promote active travel and a reduced reliance on cars for commuting, as this is a particularly high-impact area in terms of carbon-emissions in the NHS.

Team: Adult Mental Health Team
Contact: vicki.walton@nhs.net ​​​​​

What did we want to achieve?

The aim was to develop an offer which enables the team to complete cardiometabolic screening for all secondary care mental health service users, so they can have baseline physical health observations and investigations completed at the resource centre, in line with clinical best practice guidelines and medication summary of product characteristics, to promptly identify issues and prevent delays in treatment. The team wanted to be able to offer all secondary care mental health service users a one-stop shop to lifestyle information, brief intervention and signposting, including smoking cessation support and nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) prescriptions. The team also wanted to develop meaningful connections with all other primary and secondary care stakeholders, to inform shared care practice, optimise communications, reduce duplication and facilitate the service user’s physical health and wellbeing journey.

What we did

The team set out to identify a staff member to become the wellbeing champion for the secondary care mental health service, providing information and support to staff and service users. A 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) machine was sourced and three staff members were trained staff to be competent to perform ECGs. Building upon this and to optimise the scope of the ECG offer, the team is also supporting CWP’s 6-lead ECG mobile device research, which will inform the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) research data for 2023/24. Seven staff members were also trained in venepuncture. The team created contemporary links with Synnovis laboratory services to be able to obtain timely and up-to-date Clozaril plasma data to inform prescribing practices and side-effect management. The team created a clinical technician role to complete physical health checks, cardiometabolic screenings, smoking cessation and NRT support across the secondary care mental health service provision and identified a staff member to become wellbeing champion for the service.

Results

Service users are able to be given an appointment within three weeks, or earlier if urgent, for investigations, rather than waiting for external stakeholder referrals and appointments. Service users can access lifestyle, wellbeing and smoking cessation information, support and NRT prescriptions from a familiar source that also facilitates regular contact and follow-up. There is also contemporary access and analysis of all test results to secondary care service members. Results are shared with GP practices to diminish duplication. The service’s wellbeing champion involved the team and created a wellbeing board in the kitchen to display relevant items and events for staff to utilise. The wellbeing champion was also involved with the organising of a staff wellbeing day last year which will now be an annual event.

Next steps

The clinical technician role is fully-established and well-utilised. It is recognised that this is a finite service offer due to the limitations of a single practitioner and it is hoped that the resource can be further expanded to be able to extend the service offer and improve on current accessibility and response time. Another clinical technician has been recruited on a 12-month contract for 2024/25.

Team: Quality Team and Safe Services
Contact: beth.baines@nhs.net

What did we want to achieve?

One of the key aspirations of The NHS Patient Safety Strategy (2019) is the involvement of laypeople – patients, carers and families – in improving patient safety across the NHS. Every NHS trust was tasked with recruiting a diverse group of people, known as patient safety partners (PSPs), representative of the population they serve, including people with protected characteristics. The aim was to consider and promote the patient safety perspective through the employment of PSPs in the codesign and codelivery of CWP services.

What we did

• The team secured trust agreement for financial resources to employ PSPs, which have not been funded by NHS England.
• They worked with care groups to ensure that PSPs would be able to be actively involved with patient safety improvement work. This included a Clinical Engagement and Leadership Forum session around the role of PSPs.
• They worked collaboratively with Education, Recruitment, People Services, ICT and Estates to develop an inclusive recruitment campaign and support PSPs into their roles.
• A welcome pack was developed and PSPs were given access to essential learning.
• A management structure was developed to ensure PSPs received monthly one-to-one supervision and an annual appraisal.
• Feedback was obtained from CWP’s senior leadership team about PSPs and this was considered as part of the patient safety culture development.

Results

Four PSPs have been recruited over the last 18 months from across the CWP footprint. An annual PSP recruitment programme has been established and positive feedback about the role of PSPs has been received from colleagues. PSPs attend the Trust-wide and care group quality and patient safety governance meetings, and have contributed to patient safety improvement work aligned to Trust and care group quality priorities. PSPs have also had involvement in the review of CWP’s Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) policy and plan.

Next steps

Feedback from the PSPs has been positive and CWP is progressing well when compared to national feedback which has identified gaps in training for PSPs. An intranet page for the PSPs is under development, to enable staff to find out more about their work and have an opportunity to request PSP support with their local priorities and initiatives. The next recruitment of PSPs will commence in September 2024, where up to four more PSPs will have the opportunity to join the team. There is a  commitment to continuous learning and feedback is being collected from both CWP’s PSPs and all other CWP colleagues. The aim is to celebrate the accomplishments of CWP’s PSPs, so the team is planning to capture people’s thoughts around how best to do this.

Team: Electronic Patient Record Team
Contact: declan.beddis@nhs.net

What did we want to achieve?

As part of the inpatient Electronic Prescribing and Medication Administration (ePMA) project, the Trust was transitioning from using paper medication charts to recording this information within SystmOne. A back-up solution was required, which could be used to continue the safe prescribing and administration of medication if there is SystmOne downtime or there is lack of internet connection. The listener client will produce a back-up of the medication chart that could be retrieved or printed if necessary, to support the manual administration of medication.

What we did

Building on some functionality made available by the supplier the Electronic Patient Record (ePR) Team rolled out five business continuity computers, strategically positioned around the Trust. These devices constantly listen to all the prescribing and medicines administration activity happening on SystmOne and keep an up-to-date back-up of medication charts that can be printed.

The ePR Team locked down these computers so they couldn’t be used for anything else to mitigate the cyber security risk. The devices were configured so that upon being switched on or resetting, they would automatically open SystmOne and start listening to reduce the likelihood of them not being available.

Uninterrupted power supplies were added to stop them being switched off if there was a power failure. A different background and login page was created to make it obvious what the device and its intended use was. Standalone printers were purchased so that charts can be printed without reliance of the Trust’s network.

Results

The solutions have been tested in emergency planning exercises in each locality and positive feedback has been received about the usability of the solution. It has also been tested in two real network outages and in both cases, the charts were printed and used successfully by a number of wards.

Next steps

Further enhancements will be included to make sure that users can’t accidentally stop the device from listening. Awareness sessions of the listener clients will be held in inpatient settings across the Trust. Data cleansing of the allergy and reminder data in SystmOne is being undertaken to reduce the amount of text required to be printed, and to make them easier to read. Regular maintenance and check-ups are scheduled, as well as password changes for the listener client machines.

Team: Electronic Patient Record Team / Patient Flow Team
Contact: katarzyna.gozdur@nhs.net

What did we want to achieve?

The aim of this project was to reduce the number of spreadsheets and papers to record data around patients being admitted out of area, as well as to support the reporting requirements. Other objectives included:

• To support the paper-free agenda and improve efficiencies within the Patient Flow team.
• To be able to identify acute and psychiatric intensive care unit (PICU) patients, as well as inappropriate and appropriate out-of-area admissions.
• To be able to record and view the placements for CWP patients who are currently out of area.
• To support transfer of patients out of area.
• To support visual representation of out-of-area patients.

What we did

• An Electronic Patient Record (ePR) Team representative met with the Trust’s Patient Flow Manager and Business Intelligence (BI) Team representative to understand the reporting requirements and needs of the BI Team.
• Spreadsheets with the data that was being captured manually were thoroughly analysed to understand the requirements and specification of the new build on SystmOne.
• A visual representation of appropriate and inappropriate admissions using the ward view functionality was created on SystmOne.
• A questionnaire that captures details of the placement was created to support recording.
• Members of the Patient Flow Team were trained before the project went live.
• The BI Team analyses data on a regular basis and flag any issues.

Results

• Data can now be analysed and reported on via SystmOne by the BI Team using the flows of data directly into the Trust’s data warehouse.
• Reporting can take place automatically due to the direct flow of data into the Trust’s data warehouse rather than manual extraction and manipulation of data in the spreadsheets used previously.
• Time is being saved by the Patient Flow Team using SystmOne rather than spreadsheets.
• Information is easily available on SystmOne, without the need for manual spreadsheets to be transmitted.
• Data is more secure, and the risk of inappropriate disclosure or loss of this sensitive data is reduced, as it is recorded within the ePR.  Data is visible to other users who have a legitimate reason for access.

Next steps

This solution will be expanded to include out-of-area crisis beds so these can be managed in the same way by the Patient Flow Team, and the ePR Team is already working on this solution. Crisis beds for Wirral, Cheshire West, Cheshire East and Discharge to Access will also be built into SystmOne to support reporting, ease of access and visual representation.

Team: Level Up Lead Provider Collaborative Commissioning Team, CANDDID and children, young people and families care group
Contact: fiona.jenkins3@nhs.net

What did we want to achieve?

Following a successful bid to NHS England, the Centre for Autism, Neurodevelopmental Disorders and Intellectual Disabilities (CANDDID), alongside Level Up lead provider collaborative for Cheshire and Merseyside, secured funding to develop five coproduced educational films. The films contain a clear message from young people with learning disabilities and autism relating to a self-defined crisis. The messages reference what a crisis means to our young people on an individual level, and focus on prevention, de-escalation techniques, effective communication, the importance of listening to parents and carers, and ensuring a person-centred approach. Each film shares insights from the perspective of young people with a learning disability and/or autism, parent carers, young carers, clinicians and a communications specialist.

What we did

The team prioritised coproduction from the outset by involving young people with learning disabilities and/or autism from the project's inception. Their input guided every stage of the film development process, ensuring that the final product authentically represented their perspectives and experiences. The team collaborated closely with the young people to select a film company that understood their needs and shared their vision. Recognising the crucial role of young carers in supporting individuals with learning disabilities and/or autism, the team engaged with them to ensure their unique perspectives were accurately captured in the films. The team facilitated collaboration between parent, carers, clinicians and a communications specialist to ensure a comprehensive and multi-faceted approach to addressing crises.

Results

The films received unanimous praise from experts by experience, young carers, parent carers, clinicians and the communications specialist involved in the project. Their satisfaction underscored the effectiveness of the coproduction approach in capturing authentic narratives and addressing critical issues surrounding crises faced by individuals with learning disabilities and/or autism.

Parent carers described the videos as fantastic, emotional and perfectly reflective of their journey. Comments such as "it's amazing," and "I'm in tears," highlighted the emotional impact and resonance of the films. The young people involved in the project provided enthusiastic feedback and their favourite aspects included being interviewed, the filming experience itself and enjoying pizza. Their endorsement supported the effectiveness of the coproduction approach in empowering young people with learning disabilities and/or autism. In March 2024, the films were premiered to an audience of over 100 individuals at a cinema in Macclesfield.

Next steps

Over the next 12 months, the plan is to integrate the videos into the Virtual Academy learning platform to make them accessible to all staff members within CWP. The videos will be hosted on the CANDDID and Level Up websites to ensure they reach a broader audience, including individuals, families and professionals seeking valuable resources and insights into crisis prevention and support strategies. The team will also be sharing the final videos through NHS England’s Clinical Reference Group so they can be shared on a national stage.

Team: Level Up and EmpowerED Lead Provider Collaborative Commissioning Team
Contact: fiona.jenkins3@nhs.net and david.williamson4@nhs.net

What did we want to achieve?

Developed by Level Up and EmpowerED Lead Provider Collaboratives, the Community Ambassadors and Champions programme is a social movement ultimately affecting change.

As key connectors Community Ambassadors and Champions live or work in the community and volunteer their time to promote health and wellbeing messages across networks at work, in communities, friendships groups and families. Driving change, sharing information and supporting the community through training, information and signposting to appropriate support services. The aim is to bring local people and services together to make positive changes, share key messages, information, learning and opportunities, signpost families and carers to local services for support, identify barriers to accessing services and promote local and national campaigns.

What we did

Organisations were engaged across the North West. Through collaborative working, the team has enriched resources and expanded its reach, ensuring the volunteers are equipped with the knowledge and tools needed to affect change. The Lead Provider Collaborative (LPC) Team has reached out to over 200 third sector organisations, public sector organisations such as police, fire and rescue services, health colleagues across the North West, the University of Chester Teaching Partnership, social prescribers network and Barnardo’s.

The commitment of the champions is the cornerstone of our programme’s success. To streamline mental health support information, a centralised platform has been established, which is accessible to the champions via the EmpowerED and Level UP LPC websites. This serves as a singular gateway where resources are consolidated, thereby saving invaluable time for the dedicated champions. The team is committed to expanding its volunteer base, reaching deeper into ethnic minority, underserved and LGBT+ communities to ensure this opportunity is shared more widely. Every Community Ambassador and Champion plays a vital role in reaching local communities and the team will continue to champion the programme to build a supportive and brighter future for these communities.

Results

The Community Ambassadors and Champions programme has successfully recruited a network of over 100 volunteers. Two streamlined resources sections have been established on the Level Up and EmpowerED websites. Online training is available through the website and regular reviews of content by staff and experts by experience have been conducted. Content is added to the website regularly to ensure it is current and fresh. Feedback form experts by experience has included:

• “I think it’s really good that eating disorder training is accessible to champions via the website.”
• “I am proud to be a champion and will ask my friends and family to join.”

Next steps

Moving forward, the programme will continue to increase the number of community champions and ambassadors across the North West, host further online training sessions and face-to-face events to ensure the Community Ambassadors and Champions have all the tools they need to thrive in their roles, continue to build partnerships with external organisations including education, third sector and faith organisations, and work with stakeholders to identify barriers to mental health services.