Background to this work
A concern with the integration of Health and Social Care Partnerships is that the differences in professional interpretations of care may impede the implementation of support. If these difficulties are not addressed it will prevent the realisation of the Scottish Government’s ambition for the health and social care system (Health Care Quality Strategy for NHS Scotland, 2010). One way to address different interpretations is to develop a ‘mutual NHS’ by ‘putting people at the heart of our NHS’ and focusing on three quality ambitions: safe, effective and person-centred (The Healthcare Quality Strategy for NHS Scotland, 2010; Better Health, Better Care Action Plan, 2007). The person-centred quality ambition is described as,
‘Mutually beneficial partnerships between patients, their families and those delivering healthcare services which respect individual needs and values and which demonstrate compassion, continuity, clear communication and shared decision-making.’
The person-centered quality ambition in practice
The People Powered Health and Wellbeing Programme (PPHW), delivered by the Health and Social Care ALLIANCE Scotland is contributing towards the Scottish Government’s ambition to create a safe, effective and person-centred health and social care system. The high level strategic aim of this programme is for people to be able to influence their own health and wellbeing and contribute to the design, delivery and improvement of support and service, including peer support. Therefore the PPHW is working with several partners including: IRISS, JIT, Scottish Community Development Centre, Scottish Co-production Network, Scottish Recovery Network and Thistle Foundation to explore this person-centered quality ambition in practice.
Keeping it Personal project
Each of the PPHW programme partners are exploring different facets of the PPHW aim. The IRISS project – Keeping It Personal (KiP) – explores the use of person-centred approaches when designing improvements to the delivery of health and social cares services. This project assumes that a person-centered approach may align instances when the health and social care sectors have been engaging with not dissimilar issues from their own perspectives. For more information about how conceptually these approaches were aligned, see the Approach section of this site.
Aim
To support people to influence their own health and wellbeing and to contribute to the design, delivery and improvement of support and services, including peer support.
Purpose
To create and share evidence of how co-production and improvement methodology can be used to design and deliver person-centred support. This is being done to facilitate integrated working within health and social care partnerships, particularly in relation to people’s experiences of dementia and heart failure.
Objectives
To realise this aim and purpose the projects had to:
- Partner with two test sites
- Recruit participants over both sites
- Recruit an embedded leader in each site
- Gather evidence about what participants understand by person-centred approaches
- Gather evidence about what participants believe is/is not working well when delivering/experiencing person-centred care and support
- Facilitate experiences of co-productive and improvement based practice
- Develop ideas that respond to these barriers
- Test ideas and evaluate improvements
- Develop materials that disseminate knowledge about the project
- Support the embedded leader in each site to continue to support this work