What is the positive change that has emerged through new collaborations or partnerships during Covid-19 that your project is going to embed?

Hamoaze House in Plymouth, Devon provides a “whole family” approach to support and rehabilitation. Prior to the corona virus pandemic all services were provided f2f. With this suspended under Covid restrictions, the challenge of supporting these vulnerable individuals required a radical reimagining of provision in order that they could continue to engage with the programmes available.

New online collaborations using Zoom have been implemented to keep service users engaged.  These have been reactive and now need to be further developed.

Feedback from service users has been generally positive. Specifically, those self-isolating and/or shielding,  found Zoom helped combat loneliness. There are however challenges related to digital poverty that need to be better understood.   It is anticipated that new collaborations through co-production, using champions and mentors, will encourage uptake.

Online services present opportunities to:

•  expand provision
• engage in innovative ways with this vulnerable group
• develop new collaborations between service users and staff

What does your project aim to achieve?

This project aims to improve the quality of reactive online provision through co-production based on evidence

The project has three clear stages:

·         Identify impact and where improvement has taken place

·        build on this evidence and co-produce with staff and service users a more tailored online package moving forward, which recognises the digital poverty identified with this group

·        Identification of any new staff/service user roles needed, including the development of a   co-produced training package to enable current clients to become online champions and digital mentors

How will the project be delivered?

Dr Suzanne Nunn (Q lead) will lead the project. This role will be funded. Staff, service users, cost benefit and other analysis will be costed on a pro rata basis. A Q member (TBC) will act as a critical friend.

A stakeholder group will be established with staff and service users. It will discuss the evidence and use it to springboard ideas for online provision to compliment face to face services in the future.

Previous work with his service user group identified a willingness for them to work as mentors for new service users.  This will be an ideal opportunity to support champions as mentors who can support others, but expectations may need to be managed.

How is your project going to share learning?

The project will provide focused learning by identifying positive and negative benefits of online services for this specific vulnerable client group. It will also provide generalizable learning, valuable to similar organisations nationally who have suddenly had to move services online.

For the Q community the project provides the opportunity to examine a model for genuinely co-produced online delivery that will enable more people to be supported beyond the immediate geographical area.

We will also disseminate through the Q Blog and on our website We will present an impact case study Blog for consideration by the RA STEM project. Additionally, we plan to present papers at a suitable conference, leading to peer reviewed publication.