Q Exchange
Quality Improvement for All (Qi4All) Academy
- Winning idea
- 2024
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 use of QI to improve healthcare has been encouraged at national and international scales, and is being implemented into the NHS and healthcare degree curriculums. However, despite being a key stakeholder in health and social care delivery, there is a lack of evidence regarding the adoption and support of QI in the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector. This sector is particularly fundamental for improving mental health as many people suffering from mental health issues are more likely to trust VCSE members than healthcare professionals, particularly in underrepresented communities such as the black community, where support for improving mental health from the community is crucial . Additionally, we consistently see access to QI training and projects being dominated by senior NHS staff, with a underrepresentation of staff in bands 2-5. We want to ensure QI skills are accessible for ALL improving care across different levels in healthcare and VCSE organisations.
What does your project aim to achieve?
QI courses and academies can often be very expensive, particularly for VCSE organisations. Furthermore, it can be very dependent on senior leaders whether frontline staff and workers are supported to attend such training, and patients are rarely included in training or improvement projects. This impedes improvements occurring and QI skills spreading. We want to address this using our experience using QI with VCSE organisations and make QI skills accessible for more people, leading to more improvement where it is needed most. We aim to develop an improvement academy open to applications led by VCSE teams that specifically focus on improving mental health in the city of Sheffield. This can include initiatives that are already underway that could be improved using QI methodology, but also new ideas. We would like to support four teams from across the city intensively through a competitive application process.
How will the project be delivered?
This project will be delivered through a supportive application process whereby the academy will be advertised across the city and teams can apply using a simple video upload process. The shortlisted teams will go through an informal interview process with a panel that they will receive dedicated support from a coach for.
The successful four teams will be part of a 12 month academy which will include teaching from renowned experts from other VCSE groups, universities and national organisations on quality improvement, measurement, bid writing and dissemination.
There will be 3 learning sessions across the year and a celebration event at the end. The timeline outlines the Learning Sessions that will be held.
The teams will include a maximum of 5 people, and must include at least one person with lived experience (which has been costed in the budget) and a mixture of people from VCSE and healthcare organisations.
How is your project going to share learning?
One of the main purposes of the academy is to support teams to better monitor their improvements and disseminate their work. We know more established VCSE teams are better at this, and we want to level the playing field and give everyone an opportunity to have support with their ideas.
We would like to publish learning from the work, which we will aim to do in BMJ Quality Open, using our Q membership discount and will submit learning from the work to various events including local events – like VCSE annual general members meetings, but also national and international events such as conferences.
How you can contribute
- We would welcome any colleagues who would like to be involved with this programme
- Advice on how to best partner with VCSE teams, especially those who do not work as closely with the NHS organisations would be useful also. We have already greatly updated this proposal based on feedback recieved through engagement sessions. Changes include: making the application support more simple, working with less teams to ensure better support, better voucher/financial remuneration for participants and having dedicated comms support.
- We have already had colleagues who have worked closely with the VCSE sector ask if they can be involved in this work and we have added them to this proposal. If anyone else would like to be involved please do let us know!
Plan timeline
| 18 Aug 2024 | Form Academy Delivery team |
|---|---|
| 1 Sep 2024 | Application process opens for teams with improvement ideas |
| 22 Sep 2024 | Application deadline for interested teams |
| 7 Oct 2024 | Five shortlisted teams announced |
| 4 Nov 2024 | Action Period 1 starts- coaching with teams bi-weekly |
| 4 Nov 2024 | Learning Session 1 - Introduction to QI in Mental Health and teams |
| 3 Feb 2025 | Learning Session 2 - Team updates and measurement for improvement |
| 4 Feb 2025 | Action Period 2 starts - biweekly coaching |
| 5 May 2025 | Learning Session 3 - Team updates and publishing/dissemination workshop |
| 6 May 2025 | Action Period 3 Start - biweekly coaching |
| 22 Sep 2025 | CELEBRATION EVENT - conference style event with poster presentations |
Comments
Evelyn Prodger 28 Jul 2024
Congratulations on winning - this is a great project and really is a whole system approach.
There has been a lot of QI work in Community Hospitals at grass roots level - there are examples on the Community Hospitals Association website https://www.communityhospitals.org.uk/quality-improvement/quality-improvement.html and also on NHS Fab Stuff https://fabnhsstuff.net/
We have a Community Hospitals: sharing best practice SIG on this site so let us know if we can support your work in any way.
Evelyn
Krishna Nair 29 May 2024
Hi Parya,
This project is fantastic! It tackles the important issue of making QI skills accessible to everyone, especially in the Voluntary, Community, and Social Enterprise sector. By focusing on mental health and including underrepresented communities, it ensures that QI skills benefit those who need them most. I love the idea of creating an improvement academy for VCSE teams in Sheffield.
Best of luck with your project!
Regards, Krishna
Jaimee Wylam 17 May 2024
This is a great idea! How will you ensure that the opportunity is available to those most in need? The process of applying for and interviewing for such an opportunity (even if an informal process) may be challenging for some smaller organisations, and getting the word out to people who do not normally work closely with the NHS will be key. Could Voluntary Action Sheffield (VAS) help with this?
Jaimee 22 May 2024
That sounds like a great plan!
Parya Rostami 21 May 2024
Hi Jaimee, really good point. Meeting with Melissa too to discuss this this week. What do you think about a supported interview process? Will also make sure there is accessible information. Thanks - will update the idea accordingly.
Ali Hindi 16 May 2024
Great idea Parya. Happy to promote this via known networks at UoM.
Parya Rostami 21 May 2024
Thanks for your support Ali :)
Nadine Payne 15 May 2024
Really interesting idea - I've been trying for a while to gain traction with VCSE colleagues for QI and had some successes (a lot more needed though!). I'm in planning right now for our 4th cohort of QI Fellowships, a 12mo supported training and development locality offer for staff in health and social care outside of the hospital context, and will be again trying to gain interest from the sector. I'll be really interested in the learning that emerges from this initiative, and more than happy to share what we're doing currently, and where we've had reach with VCSE too, if helpful
Nadine Payne 21 May 2024
Yeah def, drop me a line - nadine.payne@nhs.net
Parya Rostami 21 May 2024
Love this Nadine - thanks so much. Could we catch up asap so I can find out more and shape this idea more from your learning? Let me know when works ?
Helen Crimlisk 12 Mar 2024
This is a great idea and will help the South Yorkshire Teams become self sufficient in terms of the training and delivery of QI. As QI becomes more well understood, there is a risk that some of the principles of the Science of Improvement are not appreciated and the rigor of the process watered down.
An ongoing training framework across the system and applicable to all partners is essential to ensuring that the rigor is maintained whilst accessibility to QI prinicples are maximised.
Will this training emphasise a flow element? Early models of QI can be inward looking and it is vital that improvements made are felt across the system and not just within a team?
Parya Rostami 13 Mar 2024
Hi Helen, some really good points. It make me think the teams taking sort should be multi- organisational. So we should have a couple of members on each team from VCSE, and also colleagues from NHS organisations learning and sharing together- I will refine the idea to reflect.. thanks
Jessica Anderson 27 Feb 2024
This sounds like a brilliant idea and would be great to scale up to do something at an ICB level. Are you linked in with the ICB's VCSE Programme Director, Karen Smith - she might be a useful link in providing some advice in how to partner with VCSE teams
Parya Rostami 5 Mar 2024
Hi Jess, we are linked in from a QI aspect but not VSCE aspect so this is a great shout thanks so much! I will send her an email!
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