People Participation at Wave 9 ILP

 20th September 2019

On the 10th of September 150 ELFT staff members,  service users and carers began Wave 9 of the Improvement Leaders Programme. The programme is a fantastic opportunity for learning about quality improvement and applying the method to solve real-life complex quality issues.

People Participation in QI has been shown to be a major influence on the success and sustainability of improvement work. At the end of day 1 we caught up with some ELFT service users who have joined the training, to find out about their projects, what they were looking forward to and how they felt about their involvement in QI projects.

 

Naheen Ali, from Luton

Naheen signed up for ILP after 3 years of service user involvement work, peer support and assessments within People Participation.  She is looking forward to starting a QI project on a ward; she is very passionate about improving wards for service users because she knows that the time spent on wards is remembered very well, so it needs to be as pleasant and as comfortable as possible.

When asked about the importance of People Participation in QI at ELFT Naheen said “service user and carer involvement is so fundamental to QI as we as service users and carers have first-hand experience of using services at ELFT. So we can explain honestly how we feel about using specific services within ELFT”.

Naheen is also hoping to lead by example to her fellow service users sharing her knowledge of QI to help support other service users and carers interested in doing QI in the future, to give them the confidence to know they can help make a difference to shape the services they use within ELFT.

 

Millie Muganyi, from Tower Hamlets

Looking ahead to the next few months of Wave 9 Millie is looking forward to seeing the QI Projects developing and focusing on the methodologies that are being taught as part of the course. When asked about people participation in QI Millie explained “It is important to have Service Users involved in QI projects because they have lived it and “they say it as it is” they are there to tell you how they feel about how the project is going – witnessing the procedures.”

 

Bob Cazley, from Bedfordshire

Bob is vice chair of central Bedfordshire working together group and is leading on a QI project to better access to various CMHT premises in Central Bedfordshire.  Bob said he did not want his first day of ILP to end. While on the course he met a delegate from City and Hackney who is working on a similar project to him, he is looking forward to sharing expertise and knowledge over the next few months.