Q Exchange
Community peer improvement champions to shape health and social care
- Winning idea
- 2024
Meet the team
Also:
- Olufolake Ayeyemi (Moriah Family Support Group)
- Bianca Braithwaite – (Mindset Maintenance)
- Jeni Malpass (Solent NHS)
- Anna Badley (Solent NHS)
- Lorna Reavley (HIVE Portsmouth)
- Innes Richen (HIVE Portsmouth)
- Dr Al Mathers (Young Foundation)
- Emma Newbury (Young Foundation)
- Gail Mann (Portsmouth City Council)
- Prof Mel Hughes (Bournemouth University, Centre for Seldom Heard Voices)
What is the challenge your project is going to address and how does it connect to the theme of 'How can we improve across system boundaries?
The project addresses the challenge of improving collaboration between health and social care services and communities in the UK. It aims to overcome barriers that prevent effective cooperation by involving diverse community members and professionals. A pilot peer researcher collaboration with the Young Foundation highlighted the community’s desire to be actively involved in shaping positive changes. Building on the success of the pilot project, the initiative plans to scale up by developing community-based peer improvement champions. These champions will work across sectors to promote innovative solutions and improved practices, ensuring that community voices influence policies and decision-making processes. By fostering collaborative learning and sharing best practices nationally, the project aims to replicate its success across different systems
What does your project aim to achieve?
The project’s main goal is to establish a peer improvement champion programme, providing evidence-based training to enhance community members’ skills in quality improvement. Additional objectives include empowering and supporting community members to lead improvement initiatives, enhancing communication and coordination between stakeholders, developing community leadership, and ensuring inclusivity by reaching underserved communities through partnerships with organisations like HIVE Portsmouth and Bournemouth University Centre for Seldom Heard Voices
How will the project be delivered?
A structured approach across 4 phases ensuring stakeholder engagement, efficiency, and quality throughout the peer improvement champion programme.
Phase 1: stakeholders (including peer researchers) will be engaged, and needs assessed to establish a steering committee. The framework for the peer improvement champion programme will be developed collaboratively.
Phase 2: will focus on co-design of training materials, recruitment of diverse community members to participate in the programme, and partnership strengthening.
Phase 3: training sessions will commence, with an emphasis on accessibility and community engagement. Implementation of improvement initiatives, monitoring and evaluation will underpin this phase.
Phase 4: Looks at how to scale up the project, based on the evaluation findings and sustainability planning. Sharing learning through diverse channels, including publications, conference presentations, social media updates, toolkits, and a collaborative network. Providing ongoing support to peer improvement champions to lead and drive initiatives, sustaining the cross-system collaboration with key stakeholders and within communities.
How is your project going to share learning?
We plan to share learning using a diverse range of strategies to ensure inclusivity:
· Publication: write accessible articles and formal reports detailing project methodologies, findings and outcomes.
· Presentation at conferences: for example, workshops or seminars to share insights and lessons learned.
· Social media: ongoing throughout the project to share updates, success stories and key learnings.
· Toolkits and resources: Develop toolkits, guides or online resources based on the projects methodologies and lessons learned. Make them freely available for download or distribution to support other communities or organisations interested in implementing similar projects.
· Collaborative network: Develop new, and sustain existing partnerships and networks focussed on community led improvement and health inequity. Sharing expertise, resources and learning to amplify collective impact and drive system change.
How you can contribute
- Do you have any experience of community-based peer-led improvement and can you share any learning with us?
- Do you have ideas about how we can ensure diversity of representation?
Plan timeline
| 5 Aug 2024 | Project initiation: stakeholder engagement, needs assessment and programme design. |
|---|---|
| 4 Nov 2024 | Initiate programme development: training material development, recruitment and partnership strengthening. |
| 3 Feb 2025 | Programme implementation: training delivery, implement community-led initiatives, monitoring and evaluation. |
| 6 Aug 2025 | Scaling and sustainability: sharing learning, exploring expansion opportunities, continuing support. |
Comments
Jeni Malpass 22 May 2024
Hi Anita,
Thanks for your question. The partnerships you have mentioned have been integral to developing the project. Working with HIVE Portsmouth - a member of our project team holds a joint post with the Trust and HIVE which has meant that we have been able to work closely to connect with Portsmouth's vibrant community and voluntary sector.
Our work with The Young Foundation has shaped our approach. Over 2 cohorts of peer researchers we have been able to test community-led methods and build knowledge on issues that matter locally. This learning highlighted the need to develop champions who can drive collaborative improvement across sectors.
All of these engagement activities and insights formed the foundation to scale up community involvement through this proposal. I hope you find this info useful and welcome any other questions :)
Anita DeHavilland 22 May 2024
Hi Jeni, can you please tell me a bit more about you have engaged with HIVE Portsmouth and the Young Foundation and this is has made a difference?
Lucy Cartwright 21 May 2024
Really excited to see the progression of this project, particularly as one which acknowledges that systems involve lots of different people and organisations beyond statutory services. This is something we're looking at within our systems improvement coaching for united neighbourhood work.
Given the wide reach, what ideas have you had for measuring the great impact this work could have?
Jeni Malpass 21 May 2024
Hi Lucy,
You are absolutely right that given the ambitious goal of reaching across traditional boundaries, measuring impact will be crucial and not without it's challenges.
We're planning to use rapid evaluation methods to capture community, champion, organisational and system outcomes.
We are keen to learn and always believe that collaboration is key. Perhaps our initiatives could inform each other's measurement in an effort to strengthen the evidence-base for community improvement overall? It would be great to keep in touch about this :)
Maureen Cossar 20 May 2024
This sounds like a great initiative. By establishing a peer support network you not only strengthen knowledge of what those in the community need and want you also develop sustainability through a peer network approach while creating a 'doing with' approach rather than the 'doing to' style often used.
Colin Barnes 20 May 2024
Thank you. We think this is quite innovative and that the network and relationships are key to engaging and working with the people at the centre of community.
Jeni Malpass 20 May 2024
Hi Maureen,
Thank you for the feedback :) We certainly see developing peer improvement champions as a key strength. We're hopeful that through collaborative learning and relationship building across traditional boundaries, the project can help forge new pathways for mutual understanding and partnerships between communities, services and organisations.
Louise Kelly 20 May 2024
Great idea to involve people from within the communities being served by our health and social care systems. It's the way forward
Jeni Malpass 20 May 2024
Thanks Louise,
We hope to share learning so that the model can be easily replicated elsewhere - we hope to show how community-led approaches may hold keys for unlocking sustainable transformation through local grassroots efforts and ownership over time. Thank you for the words of encouragement.
Helen Honore 20 May 2024
This sounds like a great outline with plenty of space for designing/producing in collaboration to shape what the community wants.
Jeni Malpass 21 May 2024
Hi Helen,
The outline we've proposed is intentionally broad, as we feel it's important to maintain flexibility to then be able to incorporate community input around the specifics of how this initiative is designed, produced and carried out. Thank you for commenting and please feel encouraged to offer thoughts on how we can best design this effort to be community driven from the start.
aidan mccrory 20 May 2024
looks really good, we need more voices of young people shaping the services they us.
Colin Barnes 21 May 2024
Thank you Aidan. We agree young people are a key part of the community though there are many groups we would like to reach and think that people from those groups are often best placed to enable that.
Lisa Maynard 20 May 2024
I love this, it sounds really unique and worthwhile. I'm wondering if it's been attempted before? It'd be great to hear from anyone taking a similar approach.
Jeni Malpass 20 May 2024
Hi Lisa,
Thank you so much for your comment. Peer research as a way of engaging and working with communities is a valuable approach that we, and others, have used in the past. However, we think that this ideas specific approach of taking it a step further by training community members in quality improvement and empowering them to lead their own community-based improvement initiatives is a novel approach. Creating and then sustaining space for different organisations/systems to work together and support improvement is something that we are really looking forward to achieving with this project.
If similar work has been done elsewhere, we'd love to hear about what challenges were faced and what worked well to help strengthen the design and implementation of our approach.
Anna Thornhill 20 May 2024
Hi this sounds like a really interesting and worthwhile project. Please can I ask who would your peer improvement champions be and where would you look to find them? Good luck with your idea.
Colin Barnes 22 May 2024
To give you an example, we've just added a video to our page with two of our peer research and improvement champions talking about the work they have been able to do in our pilot programme. Key to their experience has been gaining the trust and respect of their community. You can view it here https://youtu.be/o7q8YmLiKg8
Colin Barnes 21 May 2024
Thank you Anna. It may well be people that we aren't even aware of, so a really open minded approach is important as to who to involve, as is having a wide network of community organisations as partners.
Jeni Malpass 20 May 2024
Hi Anna,
That's a great question, thank you. Similar to peer researchers, the peer improvement champions will be individuals from within the communities being served by our health and social care systems. This includes community members with lived experience, community leaders and activists - people who support the community through their work or volunteering with local organisations and charities.
We have had a few ideas of where we can find our champions. For example, we can draw on our peer researcher network that we have developed through our pilot projects, we will reach out to local community organisations, including grass roots, non-profits and faith-based groups. We will also draw upon the wide network of the organisations partnering with us on this project (e.g., HIVE, Portsmouth city council) to make sure that a wide range of people within communities are aware of the opportunity.
We'd absolutely love to hear any other ideas that any Q members have about what else we can do :)
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