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

Since the covid-19 pandemic there has been an acceleration in the use of digital tools in all services across the country. There are benefits to digital tools and services, for example they can be useful in supporting self management of health conditions, keeping connected and accessing health information and services quickly.

However, there continue to be people across the UK who are digitally excluded, in particular people living with long term conditions, including SMI. In addition, people with SMI have been highlighted through the Core20PLUS5 work as experiencing increased health inequalities.

We have recently undertaken research on the Isle of Wight with people with SMI. This highlighted the  impact of digital exclusion on health  as well as the factors,  arguably specific to people experiencing SMI, that can lead to/exacerbate digital exclusion.  We want to bring research and QI together and test and evaluate the suggested potential solutions to promote inclusion.

What does your project aim to achieve?

The project aims to build on the findings from the research, working with people with lived experience of severe mental illness and third sector partners across the Island. The project aims to ensure people with SMI  are not experiencing health inequalities due to digital exclusion and are able to make an informed choice about whether and how they use digital/face to face services. We will promote digital inclusion through addressing some of the issues raised by research participants:

-Heath staff making assumptions about a persons level of digital inclusion- trialling development of digital champions in mental health teams.

-Lack of digital skills/current digital support not having mental health focus/reasonable adjustments- trial development of mental health peer support worker digital coach in reaching into existing digital support and offering 1:1 input.

-Lack of access to digital tools/data- scope available support and produce and promote a pathway re: access to tools and data.

How will the project be delivered?

The project will be delivered by working with partners across the Isle of Wight to build on what is already in place alongside people with lived experience of SMI. There is a group on the Island which we are linked in to looking at digital access and skills across the Island, including organisations such as ‘Age UK’ and ‘Wightfibre’. They are supportive of the need to ensure people with SMI are also able to access schemes to promote digital inclusion, we would work with this group to make sure this project had as much impact as possible and share skills across the group.

We would measure the impact of each stream of work through looking at outcomes such as:

– Impact of 1:1 support on goals and perceived quality of life

-Impact of in reach on perceived accessibility of digital skills support

-Impact of digital champion on staff knowledge levels and practice

How is your project going to share learning?

We would share learning across the Q community and also networks across the UK who are already working on the area of digital inclusion (such as ‘digital communities wales’). We are also linked with a network of people involved in, ‘Inclusive Digital Transformation in Mental health services’ across the country via ‘Thrive by Design’ and we plan on sharing learning with this network as well as linking in with this group throughout this project.

In addition, through the initial research project based at University of Southampton (long term conditions research team), we plan on sharing the outcomes from this work with research colleagues also looking in to the area of digital exclusion and how our work could be applied to other areas/populations. We want to highlight the link between research and QI and hope to write up and publish both the original research and this QI project.