NHS Quality Checkers – invitation to support NHS England with quality checking training delivery across England
The demand to be transformational in the way we deliver and measure care provided to people with learning disabilities has never been greater. The number of reports and investigations into the care people with learning disabilities has not gone unheard by NHS England and a project is underway to address, where relevant, some of the issues raised via Death by Indifference (2007), Confidential Inquiry into Premature Deaths of People with Learning Disabilities, CIPOLD (2013) and most recently Mazars independent review – Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust (2015).
NHS Quality Checkers is a programme that has ensured people with learning difficulties design and create the right tools that measure quality of NHS services they access. Building on current user-led quality checking that has for some time been taking place across social care and more recently healthcare in England.
NHS England would like to commission an organisation or partnership to deliver a national training package to support the implementation of the NHS Quality Checking programme. NHS England are seeking to establish a centralised system to support learning disability quality checking. Learning disability led assessments will be fundamental to ensuring the quality of care provided. The assessments of care settings are done by trained quality checkers themselves having a learning disability and the measures of quality are often different to what have historically been used as quality measures. NHS Quality Checkers supports people with a learning disability to carry out the peer assessment with services users/patients with learning disabilities. They are meaningfully co-designed assessments which are aimed at improving clinical access, responsiveness and outcomes for people with a learning disability.
Background
To date, The Centre of Disability Studies (University of Leeds) and CHANGE (a disabled person’s organisation focusing on the equality and inclusion for people with learning disabilities) are the delivery partners for the research, engagement evaluation of the toolkit functionality and the training materials.
NHS Quality Checkers will initially focus on 7 service areas:
1. Emergency Department (a distinct assessment separate from Acute Hospital care)
2. Community Services
3. Acute Hospitals
4. Primary Care (GP’s)
5. Dentistry
6. Mental Health Services
7. Learning Disability Services
By working together these tools are to improve the health of people with learning disabilities by supporting and improving access to services, improve the dignity and care provided during clinical practice and reducing healthcare inequalities.
Implementation
NHS England’s vision is of a network of social enterprises run by people with learning disabilities, carrying out quality checks in their area. There is no current national infrastructure that would enable this. Some areas have a local infrastructure that would support great quality checkers while others have nothing.
Following the development of the seven toolkits, NHS England have commissioned two organisations (Inclusion North and Community Catalysts) to set up a national network of locally managed social enterprises of people with learning disabilities delivering a local quality checking service. Both organisations specialise in supporting social enterprises managed by people with learning disabilities.
NHS England would like to commission an organisation with extensive experience in delivering training to people with a learning disability to support the implementation of NHS Quality Checking across England. We envisage a training package being developed to provide clear understanding and guidance into how to use the 7 different toolkits. We would hope to be able to train around 15-20 organisations across England, with a good geographical spread, mix or urban and rural quality checking providers and mix of experience in delivering quality checking.
The successful organisation would work closely with CHANGE and University of Leeds (who developed the toolkits) and Inclusion North and Community Catalysts (who are implementing the social enterprise business model of national quality checking) in a collaborative approach.
Next steps
The key to success is an implementation methodology that is co-designed therefore suited to the people with a learning disability and the needs and aims to reduce outside influence during the assessments. It focuses heavily on personal relationships, both between the quality checkers who themselves have a learning disability (which reduces power imbalances and conformity to power adherence) and other patients or service users. Please ensure you demonstrate the co- design methodologies for all elements of the project that is based on equal power and influence.
The key to this piece of work is the co-design element and therefore our selection criteria will be heavily based on:
a) Inclusion of people with a learning disability in all phases of training package development, design and delivery in a meaningful way
b) Experience in working with and for people with a learning disability
c) Experience in delivery training nationally
d) Experience and knowledge of quality checkers
e) Experience and knowledge of NHS systems and structures
Other contributing factors to selection will include
i) Value for money
ii) Experience supporting NHS and social care services
Within the quote proposal we will expect to see (as a minimum) the cost – total and breakdown, the planned activity and the timescale of project development.