At ULHT we have a comprehensive and ambitious mental health and learning disabilities transformation plan but as is often the case little resource to deliver and embed it.
I had developed as part of this a detailed training needs analysis that included sessions on:
* self harm and ligature risk
* implementing the mental health act
* role of the hospital manager within the mental health act
* Dementia awareness
* Barbara's Story
Clearly physically this was not do-able with little old me so drawing on how Trusts have faculties for delivering advanced life support I thought I would steal the idea!
I sent out some communications and a proposal and asked people to contact me if they were interested; I developed an expression of interest application form primarily to seek support from their line manager to release them to join the faculty.
As a first run I had 13 applicants from across our 4 hospital sites and I set up a training day for them where I went through all the sessions we needed to deliver, we looked at individual support needs for example if they hadn't done any formal teaching for a while and needed some coaching and I prepared a resource pack for them.
Of the 13 applicants 11 have seen the training through and they will shadow / observe me taking each of the sessions before 'going it alone' with their own sessions in the New Year.
There were and still are a host of challenges; from the logistics of planning the sessions to whether staff can be released to attend; we have evaluations in place with pre and post training questionnaires so we can be sure the training is useful and will amend as we go if required.
My faculty are so passionate about the mental health agenda I know they will be an amazing success.