Two exciting collaboratives launched this week to help mental health services to use a quality improvement (QI) approach to make life better for staff and service users.
Both are supported by the College’s National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health, which is experienced at running collaboratives which help organisations and teams share, learn and work together towards a common goal.
AMHE collaborative
On Monday (5 July) the Advancing Mental Health Equality (AMHE) collaborative launched, aimed at helping mental health care providers to reduce inequalities in their local areas.
Part of the RCPsych Equality Action Plan, the collaborative is a fantastic opportunity for member organisations to access expert support and guidance to tackle this difficult but extremely important area, and push for better mental health care for all.
The 18 participating organisations will receive support to implement the Advancing Mental Health Equality resource. Those member services will receive
- Support to identify where to begin making changes and to begin implementing methods to produce meaningful change
- Support to rigorously measure the impact of the changes they are making, allowing improved learning and accountability
- Support to coproduce and collaborate with local communities
- Access to a community of people who have, and are developing, expertise in advancing equality and problem solving
- Access to a learning community working together to achieve greater mental health equality in their local areas
- Support to evaluate what has been implemented and celebrate successes
- Support to fulfil their equality obligations under the Equality Act 2010 and to meet requirements made by the Care Quality Commission.
The collaborative is supported by our director of the NCCMH, Tom Ayers, our two Presidential Leads on Race Equality, Dr Shubulade Smith CBE and Dr Rajesh Mohan, and our national improvement lead Dr Amar Shah, as well as a wider team of patients and carers, researchers and QI experts and coaches.
Organisations will come together for four two hour sessions each year over three years to share learning, and will be closely supported by QI coaches and experts in equality.
Enjoying work collaborative
Today (Tuesday 6 July) the Enjoying Work collaborative was launched, providing opportunities for healthcare teams across the UK to use quality improvement techniques to help their staff gain more enjoyment from the vital work they’re doing, and improve team members’ wellbeing.
The 45 participating teams will be
- adopting and adapting the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's tried and tested 'Joy in Work' framework
- sharing ideas with other teams and providing feedback on what has worked and what hasn't
- utilising a systematic quality improvement approach to develop and test ideas generated by the teams themselves, and to measure joy and wellbeing in a standardised way to enable learning.
The collaborative will be supported by our national improvement lead, Dr Amar Shah, our director of the NCCMH Tom Ayers and an experienced team of Quality Improvement coaches.
Teams will come together for six two hour sessions over the 12-month collaborative to share learning, with close support from QI coaches throughout.
What next?
We will keep you updated with the progress of both collaboratives via the College website and social media channels.