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Developing Q locally

Stacey Lally, Head of Delivery for Q, reflects on the developments being made at a local level in Q during the last six months.

It was great to read about Jo Wookey’s experience at the Q welcome event last month in Kent, Surrey and Sussex, and watch the video highlights of the day, which really captured the community passion for improvement. The local footprints of Q are a really important part of how ideas are shared and link to our wider aim of enhancing other local networks and initiatives.

But what happens after the welcome events?

Beyond the core Q activities, several of the partners have been focusing on local member offers, match funded by Q. So far this year around 11 local events have already taken place as part of this. This is a great achievement considering that it was only last October that we brought the West of England, North East & North Cumbria and South West AHSNs together to start talking about how to grow the community, and it’s only been six months since we started to welcome new members as part of the phased recruitment.

You may have seen Oliver Watson’s blog about his experience on the improvement coach training programme in the West of England. The programme aimed to enable participants to develop knowledge of coaching methodologies. This type of learning is a popular ask from members, and also ranked highly in the vote on programme content for the upcoming Q community event in Liverpool.

North East & North Cumbria (NENC) AHSN is running a series of quality improvement masterclasses and as part of the evaluation, creating a series of vox-pops to follow the journey and learning of individuals along the way. The Measurement for Improvement masterclass may also be rolled out in the West of England. This sort of connecting and sharing is really at the heart of Q. NENC AHSN has also produced a great blog series sharing Q member joining stories.

The connecting and learning theme continues in the South West, both through masterclasses and a recent network for collaboration session, which included a skills session to encourage Q members to create their own peer support system within a changing environment.

What strikes me with these examples is that through Q we can help provide resources in the shape of funding and platforms to connect people within their locality, making it easier to collaborate. It is wonderful to see this taking form and there will be opportunities for other partner organisations to do the same.

For 2018/19 we will propose to develop how we work with our current partners (the AHSNs and four country partner organisations) into more of a networked approach to delivering Q locally, this will include some match funded activity for Q members.

As well as local efforts, there is of course great value in a UK-wide community. The opportunity to meet others not connected to your immediate locality often brings with it a greater freedom to share issues that perhaps might be little contentious or sensitive. And being able to look nationwide at the great work also happening in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales makes this a very unique opportunity.

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