Clinical Director's blog

June 2010

Hello and a very warm welcome to visitors old and new to the WISMS website. This update is well overdue and whilst I must apologise for leaving it so long it does mean that I have lots of stuff to share with you - updates on a range of partnership projects and achievements.

I'd like to start with the WISMS Integrated Care Organisation Pilot. Since my last blog the Enhanced Shared Care project based at Ashgrove Surgery has begun in earnest and the shared care team with its two new workers is busy developing a holistic care pathway that takes our service users through and out of intensive treatment. The pathways connect clinical healthcare to employment, debt advice and local housing support all delivered from the GP surgery. My thanks to the shared care team and Ashgrove who are reshaping the substance misuse care pathway by navigating service users through a range of different agencies crucial to sustainable recovery.

The WISMS Balanced Scorecard is a performance dashboard comprising a basket of metrics that, when reported together, give an overview of progress in relation to making savings without affecting quality, addressing key areas of health and wellbeing, bringing benefits to the wider community, and improving the service user experience. Stakeholder partners have now met to view the first cut of the data and set the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for each metric. Reporting of shared outcomes will be through an adaptation of Microsoft SharePoint that is being constructed for the partnership.

Recovery, Engagement and Life Skills comes to Wakefield

For those who aren't familiar with node-link mapping, the Recovery, Engagement and Life Skills (RELS) programme is a method adapted from the Texan Christian Institute who, over many years of research and evaluation, have published visual mapping techniques effective in helping substance misusers identify their needs and set goals for their own recovery. Our own aspiring RELS practitioners recently benefitted from training in node-link mapping from neighbouring Bradford Turning Point. All the teams have now completed the Organisational Readiness Checklist (ORC) which assesses the team's preparedness for introducing RELS into clinical practice. Three spearhead teams will soon be implementing the method which includes intensive supervision for practitioners.

WISMS trials Health Behaviour Change Competency Framework

The Yorkshire and Humber Strategic Health Authority have recognised the importance of Health Behaviour Change in tackling health inequality and this month saw the launch of the Health Behaviour Change Competency Framework. Some WISMS staff had the opportunity to test out the validity of the competency framework in the early stages of its development and are acknowledged in the publication. The Competency Framework is linked where possible to existing Drug and Alcohol National Occupational Standards and Skills for Health. I commend the document to you as it's relevant to any team that's involved in supporting individuals to make positive lifestyle choices. Links to the document will appear on SharePoint and on the workforce pages of this site.

Congratulations to the Wellbeing Nursing Team who have successfully celebrated the end of their Empowering Leadership Course through Healthskills with a learning and sharing event with colleagues in Wakefield and District Community Healthcare Services. The event attracted support from a range of frontline practitioners and commissioners and demonstrates the benefits of leadership development in improving the patient experience. Special thanks to the Specialist Nurse in Tissue Viability, Leanne Cook, who together with the Wellbeing nurses showcased a joint care pathway for managing patients with severe leg ulcers.

SharePoint is coming for WISMS

The IM&T and Social Marketing Subgroup of the WISMS Integrated Care Organisation is headed up by John Dickens. The group is responsible for introducing SharePoint which will host a range of information, policies and procedures that are common to all or in which the agencies within the partnership have a shared stake. SharePoint is a flexible tool and as well as protected areas it will be used for social marketing, discussion forums and stakeholder feedback. Watch out for progress updates on the IM&T Subgroup on the ICO pages of this site.

And Finally...

The WISMS (NHS) Social Enterprise development known as Right to Request has been given the green light by the Board of NHS Wakefield District to proceed into the transitional or 'shadow' phase. This is the third and final milestone for staff who have walked the journey so far to complete milestone 2, the development of the Integrated Business Plan. The IBP contains our mission and vision, the rationale for change and an outline strategy for taking services forward as a new independent organisation.

The achievement is a team effort and I would like to close this blog by thanking WISMS staff, fellow members of Wakefield District Community Healthcare Services (WDCHS) and all our key partners who supported us. The business plan will serve as a living document and, together with our transition plan, map the journey toward incorporation as a new organisation, hopefully by the end of this financial year. This will be an intense period of yet more hard work and commitment and we intend to use this time to further strengthen our strategic partnerships and develop the systems that will demonstrate the benefits of the enterprise model.

If you have time, please go to the Wellbeing Nurses' pages and click onto the link to their contributions to the Yorkshire and Humber Strategic Health Authority's 'Better for Less' briefing. We will also be shortly posting information from the Alcohol Health Delivery Group who are supporters of the Wakefield district-wide campaign to raise awareness about the links between staying safe and drinking sensibly during the World Cup, click here for more information. If you have any news, views, information or good practice you wish to share across the WISMS partnership then please do get in touch and we will endeavour to get the information out there.

Guess all that's left to say in this World Cup Summer is...

"Come on England – Do us proud!"

Linda