Listening to children, families and staff, on how to improve the in-patient experience
Client and setting
An NHS children’s mental health in-patient provider collaborative in a large urban area
The challenge
The collaborative wanted the needs assessment shaped by the people who use in-patient services, not only by its data. The group is small, young, often unwell and wary of formal consultation. Families were tired. Staff across the trusts, community services, social care and education each saw only part of the picture. The engagement had to be open to people and still produce findings that could be acted on.
What we did
Approached children and families through the collaborative’s people participation team, so the invitation came from staff they already knew rather than from external consultants.
Offered more than one way to take part: online focus groups, recorded one-to-one testimony, and an anonymous web form for people who did not want to speak in a group.
Interviewed in-patient and community clinicians, service managers and colleagues in social care and education, asking each of them who else we should speak to.
Heard about 20 hours of testimony from around 20 service users and family carers and a similar number of staff, analysed it by theme, and said plainly where we could not separate learning disability and autism experience from wider experience of care.
The outcome
Four themes came through from service users: living conditions on the ward, continuity and stability, how expectations are communicated, and the experience of care itself. Staff raised training and resourcing. These became co-produced recommendations on the ward environment, food, activities and information, so the collaborative had specific changes to make rather than a general instruction to listen more.
Timescale and team
Around three months of engagement within the wider needs assessment. Three partners and an engagement manager, working with the collaborative’s people participation team.
