Case Study: Ensuring CAMHS staff have access to the latest training, support and guidance around the meaningful use of outcome measures
As part of CORC's membership offer, full members can receive face to face support from a named contact in our central CORC team. Members use this in different ways – some work with our regional officers to review current practice, others may choose to receive bespoke training for their team. Avon and Wiltshire Health Partnership NHS Trust (AWP), members of CORC since 2017 have regularly arranged for CORC Regional Officer, Lee Atkins, to run workshops for staff working in children and young people's mental health services across AWP. In previous years these workshops have focused upon embedding best practice use of outcome and feedback tools and this year’s session developed on from this work with a focus upon implementing the local Routine Outcomes Monitoring (ROM) strategy and improving outcomes through an approach to Deliberate Practice, enabling practitioners in any discipline to continually improve their practice and get better results. The service has designed a new strategy for implementing ROM, based upon the I-Thrive model - an integrated, person-centred and needs-led model of care to delivering mental health services for children, young people and families.
The workshop was designed to develop attendee’s knowledge, confidence and motivation to make use of outcome and feedback tools effectively and routinely, as part of treatment. An important part of the workshop was reframing measures primarily as tools for service users and practitioners, to better inform treatment and to monitor progress – or indeed the lack of it. It was great to hear from a range of practitioners working in different teams and pathways, about how they are using, or could be using, measures in line with the ROM strategy to better support children and young people and improve their mental health.
From the perspective of the facilitator Lee Atkins, a highlight of the day was the section on Deliberate Practice, which allows practitioners to improve their skills by routinely soliciting expert feedback and using this as the basis for development.
"It was great to have a forum where this topic could be openly discussed with staff and to hear about the practical implications. It was fantastic to see that attendees were enthusiastic about this approach whilst being open about the associated implementation challenges. I look forward to following up on this discussion and hearing about attendees’ experiences later in the year!"
Since a significant part of the day involved thinking about soliciting feedback and using that to make improvements, it was important to model this behaviour. Attendees were therefore asked to provide feedback on the session including how different aspects might impact on their practice.
Participants reported that they generally found these aspects of the workshop most useful:
- Looking at how to effectively use outcome measures in practice and supervision
- discussions on using goals and alliance measures, which are measures of the all-important therapeutic relationship – between the client/CYP and the therapist. The Session Rating Scale is an example.
- deliberate/feedback informed practice
- Young people’s views
- Evidence for usefulness of tools and measures
“Opportunity to reflect on our practice and my own use of ROMs, other tools I could explore; list of examples of various ROMs.”
“Got me thinking about using the right tools and using them effectively, using goals from the beginning to focus.”
Suggestions for what else would help next time:
- Further practical training on use of specific tools and measures in practice e.g. goals, interpreting data, cut off scores
- Measures for particular populations e.g. learning disability/under 5’s
- Small group work/reflective practice/role play/case studies in training sessions
- Use of measures/goals in electronic patient record system
Lee is going to follow this up with our CORC members at Avon and Wiltshire Health Partnership NHS Trust and will plan another workshop in the autumn 2020 to get feedback on practitioners' use of measures in both the Deliberate Practice approach and in the local ROM strategy.
Tailored training with CORC
CORC has worked with many organisations from the mental health sector to build awareness and knowledge-based capacity of their staff to be able to use outcome measures effectively. We can offer a range of training courses to suit the needs of your organisation or partnership, and work closely with you to develop a training programme which will be highly effective and applicable to the context in which the participants are working in.
Please contact us to discuss tailored training options further: corc@annafreud.org.