‘Shaping our Future’ Workshop in Newham Psychological Therapies’ Service

 14th August 2020

On the 21^st of July over 30 service users and staff from Newham Psychological Therapies (PTS) team came together to spend time reflecting on experiences of COVID-19 and to think how this could affect future services going forward. The session was co-designed with the members of the team and facilitated by colleagues from People Participation, Performance and Quality Improvement.

Based on learning from previous session in Newham, the people participation lead held a pre-meet for service users involved. This was designed to help service users know what the session was about and to answer any questions.  

The main part of the session focussed on the team spending time thinking through the impact of COVID-19 across three areas; staff and service user experience, population health and future service design and value. To explore these topics in more depth the team were split into three groups, with each group having a facilitated conversation around one of the areas described above. The groups were then brought back together to hear about the different themes that came out across the team. Some of these are shown in figure one below.

Figure One – Themes emerging from the session

The team will come back together on the 15^th of September, with another session to plan next steps.

The facilitation team reflects with Dr Erasmo Tacconelli, Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Head of Secondary Care Psychological Therapies in Newham and Dr Angela Husband, Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Deputy Lead for Secondary Care Psychological Services.

Why was it important for your staff and service users to have this session?

“We take pride in offering safe, effective and personal psychological interventions, so this was an opportunity to connect together and reflect on the challenges we have faced with a rapidly changing service provision and supporting new Service User needs. It was a great opportunity to take a step back and focus together with Service Users to evolve the service.”

What were some of the key themes that came out?

“Many important themes were discussed, and these included: offering online and face to face appointments; digital inequalities; reshaping interventions to still support complex needs; and, how we can support staff to ensure the emotional needs of colleagues are attended to.”

How are you going to keep the conversation going?

“We have decided to use this opportunity over two separate sessions so another will be booked as a follow up in September. We want to refocus back on our pre-covid service priorities and understand the impact COVID-19 has had on these. We hope the session will help us see where things need to be adapted and move to practical next steps”.

Any thoughts for other colleagues thinking about a similar Shaping our Future Workshop?

“It was very helpful how, through a Trust-wide process, we could evaluate where we have come from and where we are going in negotiating the multi-layered complexities of COVID-19. The facilitators handled the session so well and they really understood the challenges that we face. The event was a success and we look forward to the next one”.

 

Written by Marco Aurelio (Improvement Advisor) with thoughts from

-Dr Erasmo Tacconelli (Consultant Clinical Psychologist) and Head of Secondary Care Psychological Therapies in Newham

-Dr Angela Husband (Consultant Clinical Psychologist) and Deputy Lead for Secondary Care Psychological Service