Developing flexible models and sharing good practice

Sue Hatton, Senior Nursing Policy Manager at Health Education England (HEE) provides an update on key areas of work in relation to the Shape of Caring Review.

A key theme within Raising the Bar, is Developing a flexible model. Since its publication, the autumn 2015 engagement activity and twitter chats generated a diverse range of views and comments on this Shape of Caring theme, particularly concerning children's nurses.

It was clear to us all that partners and stakeholders shared our passion to find the best model of education to support quality care, which has at its heart the support of children, young people and their families within their own communities. We listened carefully and as a result recognised there was a lot more work to do in this field and a round table/think tank was proposed. Dame Liz Fradd and Hilary Cass were delighted to accept a request from Professor Lisa Bayliss-Pratt,  Director of Nursing and Deputy Director of Education and Quality at Health Education England (HEE) to co-chair this event.

We invited national leaders from the children's and young peoples’ systems to develop the thinking on what makes for excellent practice around children nursing education - to secure the best educational system for child health in the future. Improving outcomes, especially for those with mental health problems, learning disability, childhood obesity, or the increasing large number of children with long-term conditions were seen as priorities. In a future blog, I will describe the ongoing development of this work.

Good practice

I am always pleased to draw attention to examples of good practice. HEE has developed with Lisa Cooper, Chair of the NHS England Child Sexual Exploitation sub-group plus expertise from the NHS England CSE sub-group, a create a film to raise awareness for all staff working with children and young people Spotting the signs of child sexual exploitation - Professional Curiosity is now available to view and share. Please promote the film across your networks and help everyone stamp out this activity. .  

Recognising the importance of maternal mental health during pregnancy and after birth, HEE has convened a national Perinatal Mental Health Steering Group. I was delighted to be asked to become a member of this steering group, which will provide recommendations to HEE on perinatal mental health and provide recommendations for the development of training across the care pathways in perinatal mental health. For more information, contact Dr Neil Ralph, Programme Manager for Mental Health and Learning Disability at HEE.maternityprogramme@nhs.net.

In this blog is a link to e-learning resources on perinatal and general mental health awareness through its eLFH platform. The latter project has recently been added as a result of the Mental Health Awareness Programme, which includes e-learning from several projects, all focused on increasing awareness of Mental Health in different disciplines.         

Health Visitors

HEE have also just launched and created a helpful new guidance on how to develop specialist health visitors in perinatal and infant mental health.

Specialist Health Visitors in Perinatal and Infant Mental Health: What they do and why they matter, which is aimed at managers and clinical commissioners. One-in-five mothers suffer from depression, anxiety, or in some cases psychosis, during pregnancy or in the first year after childbirth and this guidance aims to increase detection and reduce the impact of depression and other mental health illnesses.

I hope these resources will be of assistance to all staff working in the NHS in responding to the healthcare needs of women and their families and to further develop the excellent services that many already provide.

Pregnancy and birth are exciting times for most parents. But there can be complications and it is in everyone’s interest to ensure that both mothers and their babies receive the best possible care at the right time, from a well-trained multi-disciplinary team. Last month, I attended the launches of the long awaited publication of the recent National Maternity Review report, which set out wide-ranging proposals designed to make care safer and give women more control and NHS England’s new guidance – called Saving Babies’ Lives Care Bundle - all part of a drive to halve the rate of potentially avoiding the tragedy of stillbirth for more than 1,500 families every year.

HEE has already started work that will support some of the recommendations by establishing a Maternity Safety Steering Group, where I have been invited to be a member. The recommendation relating to multi-disciplinary working fits with the work. Supported by our Local Teams, HEE have established 10 early adopter sites across Midlands and East of England. A key component is the implement the HEE e-Learning for Health eFM fetal monitoring training programme and multi-professional training programmes including, but not limited to cultural capabilities, human factors and team working, learning together and leadership. To support this work, HEE have commissioned the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology to produce a catalogue of quality assured standardised, multi-disciplinary training packages. Further investment and roll out to capture all units within the 134 trusts that offer maternity services is expected to begin in 2016/17 and complete in 2017/18.

Further information around training and how to become an early adopter site will be included in a future blog, with updates describing the ongoing development of this work from the HEE Maternity Team. For more information, contact Terri Hobbs, national programme manager at HEE.maternityprogramme@nhs.net.