What is the challenge your project is going to address and how does it connect to the theme of 'How can improvement be used to reduce delays accessing health and care services'?

QI is increasingly being used within healthcare as an operating model to empower and enable staff and service users at the point of care to find solutions to complex quality and safety issues (Collins, 2018). Meaningful involvement of Service Users and Carers is crucial for improving the quality of healthcare services, and projects that involve them are four times more likely to be successful (Shah, A and Course S, 2018; Kostal G and Shah A. 2021).

However, teams often involve them merely to fulfil organisational demands. This undermines improvement efforts especially when the improvement work may not be meaningful and have the best impact for those who use the services.

Hence, the need to gain insights from various perspectives to understand the barriers and enablers to meaningful involvement to inform how different parts of the system can collaborate to help ensure meaningful involvement.

What does your project aim to achieve?

The aim of this project is to identify the barriers and enablers of involving SU&C in improvement work, which would inform the development of approaches to meaningfully involve SU&C in healthcare improvement work.

The objectives of the project include:

·       Identifying the barriers and enablers to involving service users and carers in quality improvement work

·       Developing and implementing a sustainable approach to involving service users and carers in quality improvement work and achieve 80% of meaningful involvement in all improvement projects across the trust

·       Measuring the impact of service users & carer involvement on improvement work

·       Sharing the learning from the project to support the uptake of best practice.

By involving SU&C as active partners in improvement work, this project will improve the quality of healthcare services for all patients, including those from diverse backgrounds and with complex needs, thereby contributing to reducing health inequalities.

How will the project be delivered?

Our approach involves leading the project in collaboration with SU&C and voluntary sector colleagues to co-design and co-deliver the project. Together, we will create a questionnaire to conduct semi-structured interviews with staff, service users and carers across different clinical/ non-clinical services. This will help us develop strategies that enhance service user and carer involvement in improvement work at micro, meso and macro system. Through this collaboration, we can effectively use resources and deliver value for money.

To measure the impact of our project, we will employ both qualitative and quantitative methods. We will conduct interviews to understand the capability, opportunity, and motivation of teams to involve service users and carers in their work, evaluate the involvement rates of service users and carers in our projects. We will also gather information and conduct thematic analysis (based on COM-B model of Behavioural Change) of the impact of involvement in improvement projects.

How is your project going to share learning?

This project has the potential to generate valuable learning for Q members and the wider system, by building capacity across the healthcare system for meaningful SU&C involvement in improvement work.

This will be achieved through a range of activities, including:

·       Sharing project updates, findings and an end of project report through the Q community, CNWL extranet page, academic publications and other relevant networks to support the uptake of best practices in involving SU&C in improvement work.

·       Providing ongoing support to organisations looking to involve service users and carers in improvement work, through consultations, coaching to teams and peer-to-peer learning

Because our organisation covers a wide geographical area in England – London, Milton Keynes, Surrey and areas beyond and provides a diverse range of services such as community, inpatient rehabilitation, sexual health, mental health, health and justice, and addictions services, the learning gained can be applied to many healthcare settings.