Outcomes training and developing the skills of…

Find out about the strategic programme ‘collaborative communications skills’ which supports skills development and system chance across the sector.

Collaborative Communication Skills Programme

We have training available for organisations who want to invest in developing the skills and capabilities of their workforce to deliver outcomes focused strengths-based practice.

The training also considers the wider organisational implications and practicalities of embedding this way or working as a whole system approach is required.

The training includes the:

theories of human behaviour that inform effective responses
principles that underpin our professional responses
skills and strategies that practitioners can use to engage with people at times of challenge and stress
how organisational systems can support effective practice.

The training has four phases:

planning and engagement with senior management
core team training with follow-up sessions
mentor training with follow-up sessions (practice champions)
follow-up session with senior management and mentors.

Contact us if you would like to discuss the Collaborative Communication Skills Programme, and know more about how its delivered and how much this would cost.

How is the Collaborative Communication Skills Programme supporting the embedding of outcomes focused practice?

We commissioned an independent evaluation of the Collaborative Communication Skills programme and how this has supported the embedding of outcomes practice within local authorities across Wales.

The evaluation involved focus groups and interviews with practitioners, managers and senior leaders across five local authorities in both adults and children’s services. The evaluation also reviews care and support plans.

The evaluation found the following:

Implementation

Effective and sustainable implementation of an outcomes focused way of working needs a ‘whole system’ approach which involves:

strong leadership support – strategic and operational and also throughout the organisation led by mentors and practice champions
linking the approach to a vision and a set of values which is coherent, convincing and unifying
aligning systems, processes and structures so that they support rather than get in the way of the approach
ensuring a critical mass of staff have received the training and are engaged
taking a sustained approach to developing and applying the skills in practice via supervision and team reflection
acknowledging the role of time – change takes time to bear fruit and workers need time to apply the skills confidently.

Impact

Significant distance has been travelled since the programme started and the impact on individuals, families and practitioners includes:

building better relationships with individuals and families by being more open and transparent in communications
developing personal outcomes with individuals by using effective communication skills
a consideration of the individual or family’s strengths and resources in each conversation to enable more balance and collaborative decision-making
moving from a service-led model to one where the focus is on what the individual/family wants and needs, and their own solutions are incorporated
jointly agreeing collaborative action plans with individuals and families
increased job satisfaction for practitioners who feel they are making a positive impact.

The evaluation report concluded with some recommendations for further embedding the approach:

commit to and invest in regular reflective practice, refresher and induction training
build on and link to existing models, resources and knowledge within the organisation
further develop strengths-based leadership and supervision skills
align systems and processes including paperwork and resource panels
train together or extend key messages from the training to partner agencies.

You can read the full report here:

Collaborative Communications Skills Programme evaluation report
PDF 539KB

Listen to two practitioners talk about how they and their staff have embedded personal outcomes and sustained the new approach since doing the Collaborative Communication Skills training:

00:00

So in Monmouthshire we now have 12 mentors and we will have another 5 after

00:04

the next piece of work. What we did is we took the collaborative

00:09

communication training and we sort of broke it up into bite-sized pieces the

00:15

bite-sized pieces that we felt people needed the opportunity to revisit and

00:19

then to practice and it's practice, practice, practice.

00:23

So, we work in pairs - the person that I work with is a Direct Care Lead. OTs and

00:32

physios work together with social workers, you know

00:35

you're not all social workers anyway and we each, each pair tries to

00:41

deliver a mentor session three times a year. The sessions are about two hours

00:47

long, we normally have somewhere between 8 and 15 people coming to a mentor

00:54

session. They're bite-sized pieces of the training as I say and these are the

01:00

overarching sort of headings that we advertise. Who benefits from coming to

01:06

these sessions? Every member of staff benefits for different reasons,

01:10

we often talk in terms

01:17

of our workforce loosely falling into thirds, a third spent a day with Rhoda and

01:24

thought "oh my god this is fantastic I want to, you know, get on with it". Then

01:29

there's a third who think "oh this is the emperor's new clothes you know we're

01:34

going to be, we've done this before it'll soon go away", and then the third in

01:38

the middle who've needed a lot more support. So the mentor sessions people

01:45

can self-select but equally as supervisors and team managers for people

01:50

who are struggling and finding it a bit more difficult you can direct them to

01:54

those sessions so it's somewhere that you can pass people on to to continue to

01:58

have more help. Okay like we said we do lots of training with people,

02:08

we've done lots of collaborative communication but still there are times

02:12

when you think "what is it about this that people

02:15

are struggling with? Why is it that they don't get some of this, or do they get it

02:20

but they just find it quite difficult to write it down and to record it?". So despite

02:26

all the efforts that we've put in, we have an IT system now

02:29

whereby people have to put personal outcomes down at the end of every

02:34

assessment or through the assessment process and they are scored, so from the

02:41

person themselves, so we took some of the outcomes, some, we took about 700 of the

02:49

outcomes and I read through them and from a thirds perspective

02:54

a third of them you sort of go "whoa, that's amazing",

02:57

a third you go "you're getting there but it just needs something else", a third were

03:04

"have you been listening, do you understand, do you know what we are doing

03:09

and why?". And then that's a third a third and a third makes one, but there was

03:15

still also a little percentage that were complete howlers where you think "oh my

03:18

god are you really qualified?". 'To be hoisted by the nurses' - that was a

03:30

personal outcome on somebody's file and you think, really? So we did

03:37

this activity this exercise which went down

03:40

really well so basically we put loads of outcomes on people's on

03:46

tables and people in teams looked at the outcomes and they had to score them they

03:50

had to rate them - is that a red outcome

03:55

(red being not a great outcome), is that an amber outcome (as in, you're nearly there

04:00

or it could be good) and is that a green outcome (which is great). Now the impact

04:04

that this had on our staff has been really, really, really quite inspiring

04:10

because they've all looked at some of those outcomes and gone "oh my goodness I

04:15

really do write things like that" and they've really thought about how they

04:20

have so easily at times slip from being person-centered and

04:27

person-focused back into that 'service' sort of language or back into professional

04:33

language, you can read some of the outcomes and you know whether you're

04:36

looking at the outcome of a social worker, a physio, an OT by the language

04:40

that's written.

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Outcomes training and developing the skills of our workforce

Collaborative Communication Skills Programme

How is the Collaborative Communication Skills Programme supporting the embedding of outcomes focused practice?

Implementation

Impact

Contact us

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