What is the challenge your project is going to address and how does it connect to the theme?

The challenge is to enable people who draw on services, family members/carers and health and social care staff to make choices that maximise positive outcomes and that all parties are satisfied with that choice and the process by which that choice is made.  There are many dissatisfied clients, families/carers and staff who are tired and angry and suffering from compassion fatigue and moral distress.  By providing supported online development to all parties we will see improved collaborative working, relationships, choices and outcomes.

Personal choice should be available to everybody (health equity) who is deemed to have capacity and best interest choices should be made consistently for those deemed not to have capacity (health equity).

The outcomes achieved through personalised care initiatives should consistently represent value for money (social return on investment) in the short, medium and long term.

What does your project aim to achieve?

The health and social care system is committed to personalised choice: personalised and person-centred care, health equity, informed patient choice, shared decision making, supported self-management (SSM), triangle of care, personal health budgets (PHBs), self directed support (SDS), direct payments, independent living, wise/unwise choices, etc.

Our project aims to improve the quality of life of all people who draw on services through personalised care by placing health and social care support in the context of a person’s self-directed life.  This is, that all aspects of a person’s life, including health and social care, is aligned to their hopes and aspirations and that they have a credible path to move towards those hopes and aspirations and to make wise choices.

By ensuring that ALL parties work collaboratively together to achieve solutions we will create a safe environment of innovation (personalised care increasingly involves technologies and new processes) with people at the centre.

How will the project be delivered?

We will work with health and social care providers already providing personalised health and social care together with the developers/facilitators of the online personal development (emotional intelligence) programme.

The introduction of the online development programme will not require changes to the existing models of care and this gives the opportunity to operate in parallel with existing services for comparison purposes.  This will minimise the risk of negative impact on service delivery and quality.  The programme is proven and is not experimental and can be terminated at any time.

The programme will be integrated with the existing review schedule of personalised care and support plans (PCSPs).  The development will be considered as part of a health and wellbeing programme and ongoing support will be available from the programme provider for all participants.

The impact on PCSP outcomes will be measured using the providers existing outcome and satisfaction measure processes.

How is your project going to share learning?

The learning will be initially shared with the providers to assess if there is an appetite for them to make the development programme available for all staff, clients and family members/carers going forward and to agree how will this be funded and will it be mandatory for staff or not.

A longitudinal study could be beneficial prior to sharing the results with a wider audience if there is reluctance to expand the programme within the providers.  If choices are reviewed regularly or as circumstances change with any revisions being implemented in a timely manner the outcomes should be improved and safeguarding assured against adverse occurrences.

The results will be shared with the NHS Personalised Care Team, Social Work England and the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS).