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Annabelle Burns's activity

In group: Building improvement capability across boundaries

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  • Annabelle Burns posted an update in the group Building improvement capability across boundaries 4 years, 9 months ago

    In our borough we are moving towards integration between social care, education, health and the voluntary sector. I’ve noticed anecdotally a real disconnect between how the different agencies approach quality improvement – the language we use, the ethos, the values, the practical methodology. I think reflecting critically and making improvements is key to providing a better service for residents. I’d be interested to build a shared QI understanding across agencies. I’m not sure yet what a project would like….

    • I really think you are onto something there Annabelle. I was only talking to someone else about this last week who was working as a health professional in children’s social care.

    • My colleague and myself will be working on something around this. We have found that there probably still is a huge gap in the understanding of QI in Social care – they seems not to know anything about SPC and would benefits of simple tools to transform processes in a services they managed.

      The project that we are considering to apply funding for is to run QI training – along side a couple of projects. Learning in Action i.e. QI training Learning and completion of a project.

      The funding would support the delivery of the training, mentoring of participants and the evaluation.

      • That’s the sort of thing I was thinking: QI training alongside some actual projects where the theory could be put into practice. I think that working towards shared aims in a project can really build bridges and shared understanding across boundaries.

    • I’ve done some work with the Fire Service that then led to us working with with Social Services. We used QI methodology – but this was guided by us. We would have liked to have taken this a step further but this requires a considerable amount of time and committment beyond one project. I have certainly come across (and hear of others in) Social services using lean type methodologies to ‘trim’ and ‘streamline’ their work against the background of the brutal cuts they have all faced (this work has usually been undertaken by external consultants or interim managers). In the organisation I worked more closely with their ‘lean work’ seemed to have landed relatively well – returning their services to the more integrated configurations they had previously found to be effective. Others may not have fared as well. So on balance I think they have used a subset of QI tools and techniques, but perhaps not the more rounded offer that some parts of healthcare are now embracing. There is a Q member (and Gen Q) Jim McManus who leads PH in Hertfordshire County Council – so a source of insight you could draw on?