Q Exchange

Building a peer support community for care home managers in Outer East London

Supporting improvement and shared best practice via a peer support community for managers in the 77 care homes in the London Boroughs of Barking and Dagenham, Havering & Redbridge

Read comments 5
  • Idea
  • 2018

Meet the team: #BHRCareHomes

Also:

  • Anna Gorringe (End of Life Care Clinical Lead, UCLPartners)
  • Chris Larkin (End of Life Care Project Manager, UCLPartners)
  • Jane Sproat (Senior Programme Manager, Enhanced Health in Care Homes Healthy London Partnership)

This project aims to develop an improvement-focused peer support community for care home managers across all 77 older people’s care homes in London Boroughs of Barking and Dagenham, Havering & Redbridge (BHR).

The idea for a peer support community has come directly from BHR care home managers, through a recent initiative to encourage partnership working between care homes and the local acute Trust (Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust) which was facilitated by Healthy London Partnership.

The focus will be on Community of Practice-style events and workshops, where learning and best practice can be shared. In order to develop improvement capability in BHR care homes, Behavioural Insights training will be provided for managers which will support them to identify effective, low cost improvement ideas (see Eric Barratt’s Q blog on Behavioural Insights). We will also provide facilitated action learning sets, building relationships between peers and promoting shared learning and shared problem solving.

In line with our commitment to co-design principles, Community of Practice members will identify shared improvement projects to focus on, and project support will be provided to launch these.

NEL CSU would be commissioned to provide flexible support, avoiding risk of delays due to recruitment and drawing on existing expertise.

For 2018/19, UCLPartners and Healthy London Partnership are working with North East London NHS Foundation Trust (NELFT) to deliver educational interventions for care home staff, supporting improvement in patient care in the following areas:

– recognition and management of deterioration (Significant 7)

– end of life care (What’s Best For Lily?)

The peer support network will increase the sustainability of these improvement initiatives, as well as other improvement initiatives underway in care homes in the BHR system.

Liked by

  • Photo of Chiya Jones
  • Photo of Nicola Thomas
  • Photo of Jane Sproat
  • Photo of Katie McCormack
  • Photo of Neil Chadborn

Amount requested

£29,765

Areas of interest

Idea locations

Comments

  1. Profile photo of Matthew Mezey

    Matthew Mezey 19 Jun 2018

    Hi Jane - it will be great if you (and others) can join the call. It should be illuminating and helpful. All are welcome - though people need to register before.

  2. Profile photo of Jane Sproat

    Jane Sproat 19 Jun 2018

    Thanks Matthew will share that with the team and I will certainly try to make the call as it will help with the wider work we are doing across the Care Home Sector in London - whilst this is a NEL focused project the great thing is that through the London network we will be able to share learning on the approach and if successful adapt the approach to upscale across a wider area.

  3. Profile photo of Matthew Mezey

    Matthew Mezey 19 Jun 2018

    This looks like a powerful approach to peer support and supporting improvement.

    If you’re interested in NHS Communities of Practice (CoPs), please join Q’s CoPs special interest group’s Zoom call on 13 July (1pm) to hear about the evaluation of the Health Innovation Network’s CoPs – their challenges and their journey.
    ** More info/to register: https://q.health.org.uk/event/the-sustainability-and-impact-of-nhs-communities-of-practice-lessons-from-a-rand-europe-evaluation/  **
    The call will be an opportunity to glean advice and insights to help this project too.

  4. Profile photo of Thomas John Rose

    Thomas John Rose 1 Jun 2018

    Geraldine/Thomas, This idea will provide enormous benefit to care home staff and clients. From my own experience of care homes in Malvern I understand some of the issues face by care home staff. Regards Tom

    1. Profile photo of Jane Sproat

      Jane Sproat 16 Jun 2018

      Hi Tom,

      It's great to see so many Care Home projects on here.

      We think this will be perfect to support through the delivery of two specific training programmes whilst providing a sustainable approach to continuing peer support. As part of the Healthy London Partnership Enhanced Health in Care Homes we would like to see care homes as an integration part of the solutions to support improvement across the system.

      Working with UCL Partners and NELFT on this is a real opportunity. Ensuring that they feel empowered and valued to deliver this will be one of the areas of focus - meaning that these skills will be available for them to tackle wider issues beyond deterioration and EOLC.

      Thanks for the support.

      KR

      Jane

Comments are now closed for this post.