Quality priorities

Improve the involvement of carers and families in patient/service users’ care

(Adult Inpatient and Urgent Care Division).

This priority builds on previous work to improve carer and family involvement across the adult inpatient care pathways, where safety needs are particularly central.

Carer involvement has been a key theme in a number of incidents and complaints in the division.

Carer champions are now available on all adult acute mental health wards and feedback has been positive.

The posts were substantively funded following the pilot and further funding is being sought to introduce a further carer champion for rehabilitation inpatient services.

To make it easier for people who use our services to share their experiences of care using a range of methods and use this to inform service developments and improvements.

(Specialist Services Division).

The division recognised that a single metric could not provide a rounded picture of people’s experience and that more creative ways were required to give people an opportunity to provide real time feedback.

We want to ensure people feel listened to and that we are able to demonstrate their feedback has contributed to change.

The traditional way of using surveys can disadvantage some more vulnerable groups of service users, who may not then have an opportunity to provide feedback about their experiences.

The division has been working hard to make it easier for people to provide feedback and offer a range of methods, including

Scannable QR codes, web links, paper forms.

The Learning Disability Service’s, ‘Your Say, Your Way’ project has enabled people to provide the feedback they want, in the easiest way for them. Our Experts by Experience, continue to work with the Patient Experience team to look at ways they can make methods more accessible in an easy read format and collate these on our patient experience reporting system.

In children and young people services. Healthy Minds and Boston core CAMHS are waiting to move to the pilot phase of their new SMS text project to gain family and friends’ feedback soon.

Improve the involvement of carers and families in patient/service users’ care.

(Adult Community Services Division).

Additional carer leads have now been identified across all community services.

The division is also working with the Recovery College, and ‘We Are With You’ on Dual Diagnosis substance misuse, and additional support for carers.

A range of carers information booklets have also been developed including supporting patients in crisis and updated carers packs. The Recovery College has also launched a range of courses for carers.

Although the data is still being reviewed, overall, there appears to have been an increase in the number of community staff undertaking the carer training and the division is well represented at the Meridian Training.

Further work to collect feedback from carers is underway to help develop next steps.

Establish a Memory Assessment Digital Pathway to support patients with cognitive issues

(Older People and Frailty Division).

As a Trust we wanted to establish a Memory Assessment Digital Pathway to widen the offer for patients with cognitive issues.  Giving patients access to a digital pathway for diagnosis and post diagnostic support. 

The Trust has received feedback from complaints and serious incident investigations that access to timely diagnosis has been an issue.

This is also linked to NHS Lincolnshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) priority to improve dementia diagnosis rates for patients in Lincolnshire and interweaves with clinical ambitions regarding a young onset pathway, as well as carer engagement and involvement.

Eight new remote practitioners have now been recruited and are supporting those on the waiting list to access memory assessment services with timely assessment, diagnosis and support using either face to face or digital channels where this is the patient’s preference.

This project is proving successful and reducing the time from first appointment to diagnosis to meet national targets. 

The practitioner posts support teams where there are longer waits and provide assessment and diagnostic service with transfer back into community mental health team for ongoing support with medication and monitoring.