How we support people to shape their communities and our services
This week we’ve been celebrating the contribution of our service users and their families in shaping our services as part of National Co-production week (6-10 July 2020). #CoProWeek
Coordinated by The Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE), it’s back for the fifth year to celebrate the benefits of co-production, share good practice and promote the contribution of people who use services and carers in developing better public services. This year, the theme is ‘Co-production in a changing world’. We wanted to show that, despite the COVID-19 crisis, there are still opportunities to involve people who use our services and their carers in how health and social care is designed, delivered and evaluated.
Co-production is about working in equal partnership with people using services, their carers and families as well as local citizens. Co-production offers the chance to transform social care and health provision to a model that offers people real choice and control.
It’s not always easy to get right, but when you do the projects, initiatives and the transformation of services and people’s lives can be amazing. And that’s because we are working with the people that matter most, the people who have been there, the people who have the experience, knowledge and drive to work with us to change things for the better or set up new activities that really make a difference.
Here are just some of the projects we are grateful to working together in equal partnership with our service users, their families and carers, as well as our local communities from design to delivery, sharing decision-making about the best way to deliver services, research, learning and wellbeing activities.
Manchester Wellbeing Fund
Service users and carers participate in three different decision-making groups for our Manchester Wellbeing Fund. This model has been running for nearly three years with service users, carers and community reps sitting alongside GMMH staff working in equal partnership to award grants. Over 470 projects have benefited so far and we have offered more than £950k to projects which support community wellbeing.
To respond to COVID-19, Manchester Wellbeing Fund launched a fast-track grants process to support community groups to keep in touch with their members. With a commitment to process applications within 10 days of receipt, the decision-making groups, including service users, carers and community representatives, reviewed and awarded 105 grants totalling almost £50k.
So far, service users and carers have dedicated more than 300 hours of their time to support decision making and delivery of the Manchester Wellbeing Fund.
Here’s some examples of the funded projects, what they do to support people in their local communities and how you can get involved in the Fund’s decision-making meetings. To find out more about the groups, get in touch at mwf@gmmh.nhs.uk or call 0161 271 0477.
CAMHS.Digital
The goal of our research unit is to improve the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people by developing and using digital health technologies. We believe that digital technologies offer huge potential to improve the lives and health of our young people.
One unique aspect is that we enable children and young people (CYP) to drive the digital research agenda for CYP mental health. Rather than doing research on or about young people we aim to do research with and for young people. So we place children and young people at the heart of our entire research process.
We run a CYP digital research advisory group that now meets online every Wednesday 4-5pm. We discuss all aspects of digital technologies that might be relevant to the mental health and wellbeing of young people. We run brainstorming sessions and workshops focused on specific research projects. We currently have around 50 young people aged 14-24 yrs on the advisory group. It’s an open invitation to everyone and we see the young people involved as part of our team.
One of the important aspects of our young people’s advisory group is that it also provides access to young people: to academic researchers, computer scientists, and digital health researchers so that we can collaboratively develop research projects and ideas. We want to identify what the priorities are for young people and then bring a team of expert researchers together to try and tackle these problems together in partnership with our young people’s digital advisory group. Co-design and Co-production are integral!
Follow @CAMHS_Digital on Twitter for updates about this exciting new research unit, and visit https://camhs.digital/ for more information. If you are aged 14-24yrs and would like to take part in the CYP digital research advisory group, please email camhs.digital@gmail.com.
buzz Manchester Wellbeing Service
buzz works with Manchester residents on a daily basis who support the development and delivery of wellbeing projects in their communities. The service has been working innovatively to keep people connected and involve them in shaping services. Working with them to create new mutual aid groups and support networks as well as focussing on digital inclusion and craft projects like the creation of knitted hearts for distribution to Intensive Care Units and scrubs for mental health staff.
Neighbourhood Health Workers attend Neighbourhood Response Meetings, so they can find out what people need and assit the local community with things like contacting supermarkets for essential items to be distributed to residents who require them. They also assist GP surgeries in contacting vulnerable patients by telephone and support local organisations to access funding as well as distributing public health information across the city.
buzz Health & Wellbeing Service has recently teamed up with Manchester Urban Diggers to distribute Mini Kitchen Garden Kits across the city to families and vulnerable people. The Garden Kitchen project has provided in excess of 500 growing packs, which are being distributed to Manchester residents.
The service also works closely with young people and are providing support to the development of an intergenerational time capsule project involving young children and older residents. They’ve also been involved in the development and distribution of a support and information pack for children and families as well as art and craft packs, which are being distributed to families across the city in partnership with Sure Start Centres. Neighbourhood Health Workers are also assisting with the development of a young people’s support network in Hulme and Moss Side.
Age Friendly Manchester Neighbourhood Health Workers continue to maintain Age Friendly networks via video, telephone and closed social media groups as well as their regular Age Friendly Manchester slot on All FM radio.
To support access to digital technology the team are producing a booklet for older people. They are also working with the Manchester Wellbeing Fund to support access to IT resources for older people. Alongside this, the team have also been supporting community groups run activities online, such as live sing, dancing and quizzes, etc.
Physical activities provided by buzz’s Physical Activity Referral Service (PARS) have moved online with a weekly virtual timetable of daily exercise classes on Facebook live - these sessions can also be viewed through YouTube too. The team are on All FM every Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 4pm discussing the benefits of exercise, offering lock down friendly exercise activity ideas and exercise for chronic health conditions.
buzz’s Knowledge Service continues to operate virtually and is working hard to support the information needs of our service user and local communities at this difficult time. This includes the creation of a Covid-19 resource hub on the buzz website, mental health booklets and a myth busting video accessed on the buzz YouTube channel as well as awareness bulletins for healthcare professionals.
Follow buzz Manchester Health & Wellbeing Service @buzzmanc on Twitter for daily health and wellbeing news and conversation, and visit buzzmanchester.co.uk for more information. If you would like to contact the buzz Neighbourhood Health Worker for your community, please email Dawn.Critchley@gmmh.nhs.uk or call 0161 271 0505.
Recovery Academy
The Trust’s Recovery Academy provides a range of free educational courses and resources for people with mental health and substance misuse problems, their families and carers as well as health care professionals.
Every six months we produce a prospectus which supports people with their recovery, health and wellbeing. The courses are co-written and co-delivered by professionals and people with mental health or substance misuse problems in order to recognise with equal importance both professional expertise and lived experience and promote our philosophy of shared learning.
This year things look a bit different, but that’s not stopped us working together in equal partnership and creating Recovery Academy videos that can help you take care of your mental health. The Academy team is also developing some e-learning packages, which will be uploaded to our website soon, and are providing Webinars to our staff teams and any other organisations that are interested in the kind of courses we offer.
Volunteers
Co-production includes delivering equal partnerships with people who use our services. We wholeheartedly recognise the value of volunteering for our service users and carers, our staff, and to our volunteers. We currently have 185 volunteers, 62 of which are GMMH Volunteer Responders helping with tasks like making up self-isolation packs, transporting goods between our services and making sure our service users who are highly vulnerable to coronavirus (COVID-19) are able to stay safe and well at home.
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We know that the direct involvement of volunteers in delivering our services can foster better engagement with our service users and carers, empower individuals and communities, and contribute to more responsive services. Volunteering can promote good physical and mental health for our volunteers and our service users and carers.
It is part of the national NHS Five Year Plan to integrate people with lived experience of mental health difficulties themselves into the workforce. Our service users tell us that they would welcome support from someone who has experience of what they are going through in order to help them in their recovery journey. We have feedback from service users and Volunteer Peer Mentors in our services that tells us that creating this connection between peers offers people hope, aspiration and motivation.
That is why many of our volunteer opportunities are for Peer Mentors and Buddies, but we also have many other opportunities as well. In our in-patient areas for example our service users tell us that although the quality of care is high, they do experience boredom which can exacerbate their condition. Therefore we also have opportunities for Volunteer Activity Assistants in our in-patient areas.
To have a look at our current volunteering opportunities, please visit https://www.gmmh.nhs.uk/volunteering
Peer Mentors
We have 47 peer mentors, who offer support from a position of real understanding due to shared experiences. Peer mentoring is traditionally a one-to-one non-judgemental relationship in which an individual (mentor) voluntarily gives time to support and encourage another (mentee). Peer mentors provide advice and guidance for those who require their support.
Our services have been piloting workbooks developed by our staff and Peer Mentors aimed at enabling people to get to know one another, plan to meet the individuals needs together, and empower people to learn and use self-help tools to aid their recovery. They have been very popular at our women’s wards at Meadowbrook where they have also been piloting the Managing Difficult Emotions Pathway.
