44. Happy New Year! Where do we go from here?

Happy New Year - and thank you for listening! 

For pretty much the first time ever, I’m starting the New Year with a plan. Or at least I thought I was. But, in the words of John Lennon, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” so perhaps planning is overrated. Whose Shoes has had a pretty crazy, organic development up until now, so I’m sure it will continue to find its own course. We’ll see. 

 So, in this podcast, I look ahead to some of the Whose Shoes work we have planned for 2023. It will serve to put a marker in the sand as to where things are at; key projects and opportunities, and then perhaps compare at the end of the year, what actually happened. 

 Look out in particular for our projects around: 

·        Family Integrated Care in neonatal units 

·        Integrating services for children and young people. 

·        Exploring health inequalities, particularly around maternity care and how they affect women and families in black and ethnic minority communities. 

 I also talk about my article in Patient Experience News this month. 

I share thoughts such as: 

• “If you want to engage people, you have to be engaging.” 
• Keep it simple. 
• Listen to people and trust them. 

 Radical? You decide. 

The podcast is enabling me to talk to amazing people who are making a difference in health care. I keep discovering more of them. 
Coming soon: I will be talking to some fabulous new guests about health inequalities.

 Here’s to 2023, and to paraphrase my friend, Helen Calvert:
"Let’s squeeze every bit of joy and opportunity from it”.

Lemon light bulbs 🍋🍋🍋

🍋 Keep podcasting and connecting people in 2023!

Links and resources: 

1. Gill Phillips’ article in Patient Experience News, Jan 2023: COMING SOON!
2. Our. Fab Collection: https://fabnhsstuff.net/fab-collections/matexp
3. Our #FICare project: https://q.health.org.uk/idea/2022/no-more-theoretical-mummy/
4. Padlet contains links to ‘Whose News’ newsletter: Whose Shoes - overview (padlet.com)
5.  'BAME' community workshop in Croydon: https://youtu.be/rlfwwT0dvUg
6. Liberating Structures

References to other episodes

12.  Terri Porrett - Fab NHS Stuff
13.  Yvonne Newbold - Newbold Hope
16.  Anna Geyer - visual recording
18.  Nadia Leake and Rachel Collum - #FICare
25.  Miles Sibley - Patient Experience News 
34.  Rachel Crook - caring for little ones, as a mum and a nurse!
 43. #WildObs Christmas Special 

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Connect with me - Gill Phillips - on LinkedIn, especially if you are interested in our brand new #CYPWhoseShoes resources or our well-established #MatExp (maternity experience) work.

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Transcript

A Happy New Year to you – and thank you for tuning in to the podcast!

I hope some of you have had a chance to listen to the end of year episode I recorded with my big Pal, #FabObs Florence Wilcock (#FabObs means fabulous obstetrician, and Florence is the founding member of that club – just wait until you hear her NHS TEDTalk , which I think is going to be released shortly)

Flo and I had some Christmas fun together, chatting and using a selection of festive sounds to enhance the story, but more seriously reflected on some of the key developments and learning from 2022, particularly within maternity care. It has been great to get feedback that lots of people really enjoyed that episode.

 So, now it’s time to look forward. … 2023

 For the first time ever, I’m starting the New Year with a plan. Or at least I thought I was. But, in the words of John Lennon, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” so perhaps planning is overrated. We’ll see.

 Whose Shoes has had a pretty crazy, organic development up until now, so I’m sure will continue to find its own course. 

 Or pathway, as they love to say in health care. 

 I keep discovering more and more amazing people – people to work with, people to include on the podcast, so that is exciting. 

 I can’t be believe the Whose Shoes board games are in use in over 80 NHS trust and I am up to episode 44 with the podcast series. The two ventures seem to fit really well side-by-side, fuelling real conversations and challenging people to embrace the often simple things that can make a real difference to peoples lives, and more often than not do not cost a lot of money.

 I’ve just had a great ‘ Happy New Year ‘ catch up with my long-term partner in crime. Anna Geyer, New  Possibilities, who does most of the wonderful visual recording of our workshops. Anna was my first podcast guest of the New Year in 2022.  We were reflecting on some of the stuff we have been doing together and most importantly talking about some of the key Whose Shoes opportunities coming up in 2023.

 So what is on the horizon?

 Well, all our work is around coproduction, and I am thrilled to start the new year with the publication of an article I wrote for Patient Experience News which will be published this week. I will include a link in the podcast notes as soon as it is released. I think you will enjoy it. 

 So how did that come about?

 Do you remember, I spoke to Miles Sibley, the editor of Patient Experience News, on the podcast last year, Episode 25. It has led to a great friendship and collaboration, as I am such a fan of Patient Experience News, and want everyone to know about it, and Miles seems to be a fabulous champion of my work too.

So Miles asked me to write an article with him, sharing some of my top tips for coproduction.

 Now, as you can imagine, certainly those of you who have worked with me or know me quite well through the podcast, my view of things is not complicated.

 So in my article, I share thoughts such as:

“If you want to engage people, you have to be engaging.” 

Cake helps.

Keep it simple.

Listen to people and trust them.

Nothing very radical there, you might think. But yet… 

 The sad thing is it does seem to be pretty radical. There is so much overthinking and writing frameworks and models and holding endless meetings deciding whether to call all this stuff coproduction or co-design or co-creation or co-something else or whatever and then launching them with great fanfare as if they are ground-breaking, rather than putting the same amount of time into actually making things happen …

 It can all get a bit depressing, to be honest … and I guess a bit depressing that there is still room for an article like mine, after all these years.

 Basically, if you just focus on humanity and people, it doesn’t go too far wrong.

I guess, if you’re looking for an actual term to use, ‘All working together’ is probably the simplest, and my benchmark is usually, when you’re able to go out of the system, and ask people, your neighbour, whoever … talk about what you’re doing and they know what you’re talking about… Then that’s probably how it needs to be.   But perhaps that is radical.

So thank you Miles for the opportunity, especially at the beginning of the New Year. That’s really special. 

Patient Experience News is just so readable and informative. I just hope the newsletter reaches more and more people during the year and that my contribution adds something.

 In the same kind of vein of JFDI (polite, version - Just Do It), I will no doubt be doing some more fab stuff with Dr Terri Porrett and the ‘Fab NHS Stuff’ gang.  

I really can’t resist getting involved in their work as it focuses 100% (what it says on the tin really) on sharing NHS Fab Stuff. And I love it because it means that people don’t have to start with a blank piece of paper, but can readily make contacts across the country and learn from excellence, which I guess is what really fires me up. 

AND the Fab Stuff team make it really easy for busy people to share good practice, without fuss or complication or massive forms to fill in or pages of terms and conditions that claim an eternal right to your soul …

For example, the idea emerged on this podcast to set up a Fab Collection for our Whose Shoes work and they just did it! Refreshing! 

(Clip from Episode 12)

 And they did. 

So that’s what we mean by #JFDI people – and the partners we love to work with! 

 So, what will be the key focus of our Whose Shoes work in 2023?

The key opportunities to make a real difference are shaping up around three key areas. 

And that’s in addition to the ongoing maternity workshops in particular, which remain really popular, and we have got lots of new enquiries coming in at the moment, so that is exciting.

So what are the three areas? …

 I really don’t suppose many of you remember Miss Ann Elk gearing up, on Monty Python, to tell us her Brontosaurus theory?: I feel a bit like that.

Apologies to younger listeners who might not have a clue what I am on about here, because they are lucky enough to be … younger.

 Herp Hmm. My three key areas of focus for 2023 are. 

Herp Herp Hmm ..

First, you may have already heard about our digital project around Family Integrated Care in neonatal units, funded by the Q community and the Health Foundation.

 It feels innovative and exciting, developing Whose Shoes ‘mini experiences’ around the revolutionary idea that parents can have a central part in caring for their babies. Indeed they need to do so.

 It has been exciting to see Family Integrated Care move from being a rather wacky idea coming from Canada to ACTUAL. NATIONAL.  POLICY! How good is that?

 Key messages include such radical, not-radical ideas as  ‘parents, not visitors’. 

 This topic came up strongly in Episode 18, where I spoke to Rachel Collum and Nadia Leake, who both have experience of babies in neonatal units. In fact that episode is a great way of understanding more about this project and why it is so important.

We will no doubt include our famous ‘Theoretical Mummy’ poem – one of the early poems we used in our Whose Shoes ‘Nobody’s Patient’ work, looking at how women and families can fall between gaps between services, such as Nobody’s Patient read here by Helen Calvert – more about Helen later!

We think that enabling clinicians to hear and explore powerful audios, with the actual people telling the stories, will be really powerful and good. Neonatal care is an area very close to my heart.

 The final resources will be available free of charge to all neonatal units, and hopefully really help clinicians understand what makes a difference in early parenthood in these circumstances - and how we can all work together to join things up, including when the parents go home and carry on with their lives as a new - or indeed expanded – family.

 The second project is with Midlands Partnership Foundation Trust. We are using the Whose Shoes board game across the trust, including developing bespoke scenarios and poems around all aspects of integrating services for children and young people, including community-based services, such as education, and so on. 

It is brilliant that the trust are embracing coproduction and prepared to get everyone around the table to tackle truly ‘wicked’ problems, in the sense that many problems in the healthcare system are difficult or impossible to solve because they have many interdependent factors, and so many partners involved who often have their own competing priorities and different sources funding, with, in this case, the actual children and families all too often caught in the centre. another good example, sadly, of Nobody’s Patient.

 The lovely chatty episode I recorded with Rachel Crook (Episode 34) gives extraordinary insight here. When these issues can be brought into the open in the context of listening and valuing all parties, whether healthcare professionals or people who use the services - or indeed people who are in both camps, because we are all people and these things happen to everybody – extraordinary things can happen. 

 The groundwork is being laid brilliantly here – Lyse Edwards and her team are enticing busy people to want to take part. I think a bit of intrigue is a really good thing, and she has developed the ‘Whose News’ newsletter, which is an idea we’ve taken from the fabulous Kate Woollett at Kingston Hospital a few years ago, where we did something a little bit similar in terms of working on a trust-wide kind of basis.

 And again that cross-fertilisation of ideas, without having to do everything from that bank page.          

 In this project, and indeed, the family, integrated care project, we are hoping to make imaginative use of Liberating Structures. I’ve learnt a lot about liberating structures through Lyse, put together with the power of bespoke crowdsourced scenarios and poems written specially for the Whose Shoes board game for this particular audience, to enable open and honest conversations. 

 Exploring the real issues, such as so-called ‘hot potato’ children (nobody wants children and families to feel like that) you might think of these as children with complex needs that may span multiple departments or organisations and whose needs do not quite ‘fit’ with a specific service,  and compounded by the fact that some of these are controlled or commissioned separately. 

I’m delighted that we have got Yvonne Newbold on board, as a highly respected voice for parents and carers. we are still working out the details because this is what coproduction is but looking at an imaginative mix of focus groups and other ways to bring in the children and young people themselves. Reaching out to partner organisations, acute services, local authorities, schools, community groups and basically anyone else who is interested – or SHOULD be interested … that is some times the key thing. So, wish us luck!! And if you are in the Stoke or Staffordshire area, this means YOU! Please.

It is all really complex, and as I say organisations I think are brave to have these genuine conversations rather than some of the things that people take a box with and claim that they have done coproduction –hmm, really?

The third area of focus is continuing to build on our work around health inequalities, specifically in maternity care, but also more generally. We have already done some exciting work in partnership with selected NHS Trusts, including West Hertfordshire, with whom we did a ‘Black History Month’ event. We are particularly interested in inequalities in maternity care, affecting women from Black and Ethnic Minority Communities, building on our work with inspirational Darzi Fellow, Rosie Murphy, including the community workshop we held in Croydon. You may have seen the film of that, and I will include a link in the podcast notes.

 There is a lot of interest in our work in this area, so we will see where it goes in 2023. And of course, I am looking forward to working with the cohorts of Darzi Fellows who follow after Rosie – I don’t know how Professor Becky Malby and the team at London South Bank University manage to recruit such a consistently brilliant calibre of healthcare professionals keen to solve wicked problems and build personalised services WITH people and not just FOR them. But somehow they do.

 And now I find that, not surprisingly, my list of three key topics has gone a bit awry and now needs to add, in rather Monty Python-esque fashion again I guess, a fourth one.

 I have remembered that it looks as though Lewisham and Greenwich NHS trust are, as always, keen to do some innovative Whose Shoes work. We are working out at the moment a realistic way of putting together some scenarios to support and improve the experiences of student nurses. Recruiting and retaining the best people (and treating them well) is SUCH an important area of the NHS at the moment. These hard-working young people who are getting themselves into debt to join a profession that is under so much pressure, and whom we desperately need. ... Anything we can do to help them, will be extraordinarily rewarding. Lewisham and Greenwich have done some similar work with student midwives in the past, using the Whose Shoes approach, so I’m sure they can pull it off. Again, fingers crossed.

 And as for  the podcast, it is brilliant to see how it can support this work. It is all very organic and as I combine inviting people whom I originally had in mind when I started the series (I’m making slow progress – bear with me!!) and people I meet along the way, or get introduced to through the other people on the podcast, it’s incredible really, I certainly never expected that I would have had seven different Rach(a)els by the stage - there is something pretty special about Rach(a)els it seems – and people who are perhaps able to shed light on these specific projects and wicked problems. them more effective.

I want the podcast to stay spontaneous and fun. My original idea was to leap around wildly between topics and perspectives and keep an element of surprise. I guess again going back again to my Monty Python roots – as you have probably gathered, it was a big part of my youth.

 I am going to start the new year with two or three podcasts around health inequalities.    I have a couple of wonderful podcast guests already lined up and others ‘in my sights’

 The first one, coming very soon – probably the next podcast, is Noreen Bukhari. Now Noreen has worked for many years for an innovative third sector organisation in Coventry, FWT, supporting women from black and ethnic minority communities - with employment and finding meaningful ways to contribute, learning English, if it is not their first language, possibly housing problems, social problems, and then of course maternity care. It is all so fabulously integrated and sensible – the sort of set up that others feel they can wave a ‘quick fix wand’ and tick a box, whereas this has literally taken a couple of decades of building trust and relationships and a strong network of statutory and non-statutory organisations working together. Fascinating. Noreen has also been a long-standing chair of the local MSLC, as it used to be called, Maternity Voices Partnership as it is now, so offers interesting insights into maternity care to support women and families from different cultures.

Another early podcast guest will hopefully be Rosie Murphy, the young midwife I mentioned. Rosie pulled together the impactful Whose Shoes workshop in Croydon. The ripples are still very much flowing from that one. I loved working with Rosie and we are keen to do a lot more together, so it will be great to hear her ideas and insights.

 I understand that Rosie’s Viva at the end of her prestigious Darzi fellowship was pretty extraordinary, so she is definitely one to listen out for.

I love chatting - as you’ve probably gathered, I love chatting to people with all sorts of different experiences and insights, and as I say, I have a few people in mind … so look out!

So, here’s to 2023.

And paraphrasing my friend Helen Calvert, whom you heard from earlier with the theoretical mummy poem … Helen says, “let’s squeeze every last drop of enjoyment from our work and our lives”

Helen was one of the original #MatExp (maternity experience) movers and shakers, and it has been fascinating and inspiring to watch her build and embody this philosophy over the years, alongside her JFDI, wild horses, just making things happen. 

I think it’s something we can all learn from. Life is too short not to have as much joy as possible in our work and in our lives, even when things are tough – and indeed especially, I’d say, when things are tough.

I feel so privileged to be working alongside and building friendships with such fascinating and AMAZING people. Let’s keep building THOSE connections IN 2023.