As we begin a new calendar year, still in the midst of the coldest and darkest months, community is as vital and restorative as ever.

We’re so pleased to be heading into the sixth round of Q Exchange, our funding programme designed to draw on the strengths of the many to take your ideas and develop them into funding bids that are full of potential. It is always uplifting and inspiring to see the different interactions that take place around the programme, reminding us of the power in putting heads together to collectively develop and implement projects – even in challenging contexts.

What is Q Exchange?

Q Exchange is Q’s participatory funding programme, designed to support your ideas to grow and develop into proposals with the help of varied perspectives of others in the community and beyond. When the programme opens in February, members will be invited to post ideas for projects that fit with this year’s theme on the Q website and create online project pages. There are no limits to the number of ideas that can be submitted.

In March, during the ‘refine and submit’ stage of the application process, members are encouraged to refine ideas by commenting and offering support on the project pages and helping applicants to develop their ideas. Applicants then choose the idea they will convert into a formal proposal, and complete the additional information, by the application deadline.

Submitted proposals will be shortlisted by panels of Q members. In May, we will announce the shortlist and applicants will campaign for support from the community, who will vote on the ideas they would like to receive funding.

And even if you don’t plan on putting an idea forward this year, there are lots of ways you can support your fellow members in their bids for funding. Read more about the different ways to get involved.

The theme

For Q Exchange 6, we are inviting members to put forward project proposals focusing on the question: How can we improve across system boundaries?​

We are looking for proposals that involve two or more parts of the health and care system and focus on improving the quality and efficiency of the interface between different sectors. For example: care at home, primary care and the community sector.

Projects should relate to one or more of the following areas:​

• Reducing waits sustainably and equitably​.
• Increasing productivity and reducing waste.​
• Boosting the culture, capabilities and structures needed for learning and improvement.
• Embedding improvement into management systems and processes​.

We are looking for projects with potential for insights or interventions that are scalable. We expect proposals to show proactive links to local or national priorities and structures, as well as making active use of the Q community.

Improving productivity is an especially difficult but pressing challenge for the sector. Connecting your ideas to the holistic benefits you can achieve and showing the potential to inspire productivity gains alongside other objectives will be important to sustaining and spreading the work.

Why this theme?

During the pandemic and throughout the recovery period, we’ve seen that the improvement ideas most likely to embed and scale are ones that bring together services.

With the move towards formalisation of integrated care and increased calls for productivity, improvement has a powerful role to play in supporting effective work across sectors. While it’s crucial we continue action on specific service challenges, taking a wider systemic view is a critical strength of the approach this community can take on the productivity challenge. Together, we can build towards solutions that will have an impact at every level, from individual teams to system wide.

Q Exchange’s open collaboration enables people to come together and develop strong ideas by building on what’s already known. It allows us to pool our skills, energy and understanding from across the community and beyond, to support improvement across system boundaries. And ultimately, to bring about collaborative, meaningful change that can improve patient experience and outcomes.

Join our upcoming event to learn more

We look forward to seeing the ideas you’ll put forward and all the ways in which you will support each other to bring them to fruition, bringing about long lasting change to the sector.

Q Exchange opens for ideas on Tuesday 6 February 2024.

Sign up to our online event, on Monday 19 February 2024 to learn more about the application process.