Background:
43,000 people in Belfast are caring for a family member or friend who is ill, frail or has a disability. The value of this care equates to £942 million per year. Co-production with carers is not a tick box exercise for us. It is how Belfast Trust staff and carers work together, collectively and equally, to find shared solutions.
Objectives:
Involve a wide range of carers, at varied levels across Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, to improve the quality of carer services delivered and experienced.
Methods:
Co-production with carers of the Belfast Trust Carer Strategy 'Caring Together':
- Carer access to Safety Quality Belfast level 2 QI training and participation in Project Team.
- Involvement of carers in Appreciative Inquiry Project to review Learning Disability services.
Results:
The production of the Trust's three-year Carers' Strategy, co-designed with carers and also informed by an innovative wider process of carer engagement, which allowed over 500 carer voices to be heard:
- Development of a quality improvement project, aimed at increasing referrals to a central carer support database, with carers trained in QI methodology and equal members of the project team.
- A comprehensive engagement process to inform the review of learning disability day centres, co-produced with carers. This has included carers being trained in Appreciative Inquiry methodology.
Conclusions:
Genuine co-production work seeks, values and learns from the unique lived experience of carers. The involvement of carers at a range of levels across the Trust, and particularly in relation to the three strategic pieces of work detailed above, has been hugely beneficial. The active contribution and equal participation of carers enables the Trust to develop better quality services, which are more responsive to expressed support needs. Decisions are becoming more carer-focused, with capacity-building for carers becoming more embedded, as good practice.
Patient or healthcare consumer involvement:
Carer involvement has been at the core of the three pieces of work detailed, with carers co-writing strategy, co-facilitating training and engagement exercises, attending and actively participating in training and defining the scope of quality improvement projects.
