Background

Our ageing population, combined with increased life expectancy will place considerable strain on the health, care and social system for workers and quality of life for citizens who may find themselves in one of these systems now or in the future

Local context

Cheshire and Merseyside covers a population size of 2571,170, within this region there are 12 Clinical Care Groups, 20 healthcare providers, approximately 400 GP practices and 1 Standardised Transformation Partnership. Combined, Cheshire and Merseyside contain 10 metropolitan boroughs of Liverpool, Knowsley, Sefton, St Helens, Wirral, Cheshire West and Chester, Cheshire East, Warrington and Halton.  There are 639 care homes across the footprint.

8.3 % of our population is currently over the age of 75, higher than the national average, which currently stands at 7.8 %.  As already stated our elderly population is continuing to increase each  Local Authority support the Care Homes, financially, within their geographical area, and are accountable for the monitoring of the quality within the care home settings in that area.  Concern is that services cannot sustain the growth in the elderly population if they continue as they are at present. We need to ensure services are more efficient and fit for purpose. Collaboration and peer-to-peer support is essential to our success.

Our Idea

We would like to establish a peer-to-peer collaborative care home learning system for all staff across care and health environments.

This collaborative care home learning system would include those who share the same values and principles that will help achieve the collective ambition.  By sharing our own knowledge and experiences, as well as recognising what shared resources may be available, we feel that we can really make a difference across the Cheshire and Merseyside footprint.  We envision that this collaborative learning system would have both formal and informal structures allowing improvements to be made for staff, residents and families.

Benefits

Care Home Staff – recognise that there is greater opportunity for sharing, learning and lessons to be learned across the system, which will benefit all.

Reduced duplication of efforts – working to reduce duplication, standardise practices, share protocols and processes that improve services.

Residents- improvement in the quality of the service  within the Care Homes across our collaborative group will directly improve the quality of care for our elderly population.

Clinical services – reduction in unnecessary demands on  clinical services, through more effective use of limited resources available.

Intended outcomes from this peer-to-peer learning system include:

• use of pooled resources to bring efficiencies in training costs
• promotion of innovation to reduce harm
• use of collaborative to pilot new ways of working
• Quality Improvement methodology embedded across the sector
• Links with partners in education developed and built

Current steps towards establishing a peer-to-peer support network

There was a need identified for this Care home Collaborative learning system across the Cheshire and Merseyside footprint.  As a result, a Cheshire and Merseyside meeting was scheduled and invitations sent out to all potential stakeholders CCG’s, Local authorities and Care Homes Managers. The attendance demonstrated the collective desire to work together. The collaborative identified key areas that required attention (see driver diagram).

It was recognised that there are some really good examples of quality improvement and change initiatives across the region.  What is missing is the opportunity to share, connect, combine and expand these individual successes.  We see this opportunity as a way to co-design and blend a QI driven approach with evidence, measures and metrics that are owned by care home teams and that support the confidence and monitoring requirements for better experiences for residents, their families and the teams who care for them.

We believe that working together and helping staff understand the cultural challenges, behaviours and issues within care home settings will support and drive quality and safety improvements.  Teams deserve and desire the opportunity to recognise and own quality and safety for themselves and their residents.