How did we go about it?
A band of dedicated staff came together to talk about how to meet the needs of an increasing caseload whilst continuing to deliver a high quality service in today's economic climate. Regular protected time was set aside to make the much needed changes.
Each batch of time involved an opportunity to come back together from small working groups to feedback to each other. This regular facilitated meeting was an opportunity to celebrate progress, air concerns, come up with ideas, and go away with an agreed action plan.
There is a core of staff of staff that leads each working group. Without the commitment of these staff the work would not have been successful.
The first priority was to share work needed to gather an evidence base. How would we explain the way our new care model works to a member of the local community?
The new way of working is called "The modular approach", and aims at earlier intervention and sometimes quite intensive input.
Timely interventions give the child the best possible chance of improvement. One of the underpinning principles are that parents and staff collaborate using a wide range of modules, or packages. Input is not about the "hours", rather tailored so that children get what they need. This relies upon a fundamental alteration in staff and public perceptions of what "Therapy" is, with structured, direct involvement from therapists where needed, as well as empowering parents and settings to learn skills.
The modular approach fits within the structure of the Intervention Planning Meeting (IPM), a platform for parents and the child's voice to be heard. Therapists have felt more confident to be able to manage expectations, to "give things a go" and come to a successful compromise with parents over what is felt to be the best for the child. The IPM provides an opportunity to review progress and provision.
What has the level of staff engagement been like?
Staff has been really well engaged in the process, saying the protected service development time has been invigorating! Having the time out has been crucial to stop, breathe and focus on doing something innovative has given staff a buzz!
It has been exciting to deliver this, rather than just talking about it. Staff believes in the modular approach because they created it, and know the evidence base it is coming from, hence, staff is invested in the success of this new way of working.
What have we learnt from feedback on the modular approach?
One year on from launch parents have rated the modular approach very positively overall - and the percentage for "agree/strongly agree" responses went up on most measures.
In particular parents indicated that they felt involved in the decision making about the type of therapy their child receives (76.5%) involved in their child's therapy (76.5%) that their child was receiving their therapy in the most appropriate setting (76.5%) adequately trained in Makaton (59%) and how the environment could support or limit their child's communication (88%)
Further improvement in the future is likely to focus on settings, whose staff gave a more mixed bag of responses - nevertheless there were also some increases in the percentage ratings for agree/strongly agree.
The modular approach was initially developed to target preschool children with global developmental delay however the team quickly realised that with a bit of tweaking this approach could be rolled out to other client groups within Early Years complex Needs, for example children with autism. In addition other parts of the Bucks SLT Service are learning from their experience.