Wild Card - Whose Shoes?

49. Behind the scenes of our 'Whose Shoes' work with children and families

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 Building on the theme of storytelling and creativity.

How do we get people to come along to our events?
What is Whose Shoes anyway?

Today I am talking to Lyse Edwards and Rachel Crook from the Children and Families team at Midlands Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust as we prepare for our forthcoming Whose Shoes events in May - looking to make care more holistic for children and families and to improve perinatal mental health.

We talk about some of the more creative methods we are using to draw people in and ensure this is TRUE coproduction.

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 Lemon lightbulbs 🍋💡🍋
I still need to squeeze the lemons for this episode 

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Please recommend 'Wild Card - Whose Shoes' to others who enjoy hearing passionate people talk about their experiences of improving health care.

Gill Phillips:

Thank you to everyone telling me that they’ve been enjoying the recent episodes around storytelling. 

I’m fascinated by all the different ways that there are these days, to tell stories and draw in new audiences. It’s brilliant to see how podcasts are taking off. 

In these pressurised times, when we want to attract people along to Whose Shoes workshops, an A5 leaflet stuck up in the clinic doesn’t totally do it these days. So we are using sway stories, Facebook groups, podcasts, video, clips, and all sorts! 

So it was with great pleasure that I accepted an invitation to be a guest on the Midlands partnership, Foundation Trust and it was a great pleasure to accept an invitation to be a guest on their podcast, chatting with colleagues there about our current project where we are crowdsourcing new whose shoes material to use across the children’s and families division to help people have the conversations they need in order to provide more holistic and person centred care to the families that they serve
across a huge area geographical area, and quite complex in many ways I’m hoping my listeners here will find it interesting to share some of our conversation, as I am working with such great people on this project and it is quite an insight into my Whose Shoes work. 

I’ll chop it about a bit to add some extra snippets and stories from behind the scenes and take out some bits that might be less interesting if you are not directly involved in Staffordshire. 

But I’ll also include in the podcast notes a link to the original Mpft podcast so that you can hear that if you’re interested. 

So, here goes … 

Lyse Edwards 3:04

So welcome to this episode of the MPF T Podcast. I'm Lyse Edwards, I'm the Head of Operations for the Children and Families Care Group. And I'm joined today by two guests, and we're going to talk to you about something called 'Whose Shoes', and why we're using it in the Children and Families Care Group and how you can get involved. So I am delighted today to be joined by Gill Phillips, who's the owner and founder of Whose Shoes and Rachel Crook who's Professional Lead for the Children and Families Care Group who and we were working together on this project. So Gill let me let you introduce yourself.

Gill Phillips 3:38
So I'm the creator of Whose Shoes I could say it's a board game. But it's more than that. It's an approach really, it's a concept about bringing people together as equals to have conversations that matter. So how did all this come about? You want to know about that Lyse? 

Lyse Edwards 4:11

Yeah, that'd be great. Tell us how did you get this idea of where did it come from? 

Gill Phillips 3:58 

Well, really, the idea of getting people in the room together, I think I really believe in that anyway, and I've got the kind of grassroots approach, I think I believe that the real answers are from the people who work in a service or from the families. And I think that's kind of, you know, part of my DNA really, but where the idea actually came from was, before I jumped ship and set up my own little company with Whose Shoes, I worked for 30 years, I can't believe it now, in social care. And towards the end of my time, in my sort of day job, if you like, I became really passionate about person centred approaches personalization. But I became frustrated because I felt it was a buzzword, I felt that people were abandoning it around, and that we were all meant to be doing this new personalization, but nobody knew what it was. And that was like the elephant in the room. And the more I talked to different people are found out, you know, what mattered to different people. So for example, if you were in a care home, then what would person centred approaches mean to you, and you'd have the care home manager's perspective, because actually, they've got to run a service that works, you'd have the staff that work there, and you want them to be fired up to come to work and enjoy their job. Obviously, you've got the families, you've got the people living, it's their home, in that place. And how does it work for people, for example, to have choice, because it's very easy to say everyone must have choice and you start, we started to kind of tease through what that meant, in an actual situation, and how difficult it was, you know, can people choose exactly what meals they want, when they want, but somebody's got to order that food in advance, it can't be as casual as it could be, perhaps in your own small house with, you know, a few people in it. So that was the kind of thinking behind Whose Shoes, I mean, obviously, it was quite a big story at the time. But I started to research and see how many different perspectives there were, and how amazing it would be to bring those actual people together to talk about it and see what was realistic, and what they could do together. And basically, I had no idea how to create a board game. And then Coventry University came on board, very, very entrepreneurial, very helpful. And doors open, I believe that that if you're kind of passionate about something, you don't need to know exactly how you just need to know what you want to do. And it kind of happened from there, if you like. And then over the years it's morphed through is exactly the same tool. 

It's a board game that looks at things from different perspectives. But we did some work around dementia care and maternity and children's, we did some quite early work around children and families. And it hasn't been at all a linear path, as you can imagine. But over the time, and the key thing for me, I think, has just been finding the right people, the right connections, who really want to make change, and don't want too much process and stuff and bureaucracy along the way. Because I haven't really got time for that. So that's it. In a nutshell, what we've been up to.

Lyse Edwards 7:09

And there's so many different areas you've applied Whose Shoes do, haven't you? And I'm really curious, Joe, what have you found it enables it and you've touched on it a little bit. But all those workshops that you've done, like what would you say has been the standout features of them? What is it what's made the difference from perhaps more traditional ways of working?

Gill Phillips 7:30

I think just people, if you bring people together, they can be scared, for whatever reason. I think as soon as they feel valued, and that they feel listened to and that what they say is going to make a difference. And that they can be part of that difference rather than just going away and never hearing anything again. So a lot of the success in a way has been around the people, obviously running the sessions that you know as you guys are in your own particular organisation and not seeing it as a tick box and not seeing it as like we've had our Whose Shoes workshop now, but to kind of like embed it into the day to day thinking. The thinking being I mean that the Whose Shoes approach is that we don't wait for permission, you know, I say to people at an event you've come along today, not just because you're genuinely keen to improve things, but you individually, I haven't got a clue what it might be, but you individually will be passionate about something, you'll want to make a change yourself. But you might feel that you can't do that. And if we can drill down into that, and empower people to think, well, even if it's a very small thing, I can do that. And very often they're not small things are actually quite big things, but then perhaps think about the next step. 

But I think, connecting people with other people, and this is what's evolved over the years, that I can pretty much say in a workshop, if somebody makes a pledge that probably through my network, I can connect them with something that will add some value. And social media has been a big part of that. And then I think suddenly, people feel they don't need to start from a blank sheet. And they're not alone. And actually the kind of not just relationships and connections, but friendships that have come through this work, purpose, matching people with an opposite number somewhere else who's got exactly the same problem. And that might be within your team or your organisation or anywhere across the country or indeed the world. And that's exciting.

Lyse Edwards 9:35

And you are an absolute network-weaver extraordinaire, Gill. That's one of the things that always strikes me about you the people that you know, and you connect together. And I guess that's a good opportunity to come in and say hi, we connected really, and you mentioned social media, and I am an avid tweeter. So I'd been following along, I think, Whose Shoes and the work you've been doing on Twitter and I knew particularly had done some work around maternity transformation nationally. I'm friends with Sarah-Jane Marsh, we did the training scheme together. And so I'd been following...I think I remember watching a singing and some musical MatExp musical and thinking, Oh, this looks really interesting and a different way of engaging people. And then I finally had the opportunity to talk to you on Q community, which is a quality improvement community for the NHS, lunch and learn about Liberating Structures and Liberating Structures is probably another podcast, but something I'm really interested in. And it's really about how do we include more voices and involve more people. And we started talking, I think, in a breakout room about Whose Shoes and I could see how it chimed with those sort of ideas around involving more people, hearing more voices. And I guess as a care group, we were trying to think about how do we involve parents, carers young people more in co-designing and developing our services. And we've done some small change scale projects. So I remember we did a little project called 'Talking Together For Change' with a group of parents whose young people have been through our autism service to look at, what was it like in their shoes? And what small things could we do to make a difference? And that resulted in small things like, well, let's just change the language of our letter. And we did that with the parents. But we were looking for more ways for doing that. And ways in which participants could feel comfortable and safe and engage, because it's quite scary, isn't it coming into a workshop, especially, you know, if you're, you don't work in the service, or you don't work in the NHS with lots of professionals and coming into an event and thinking well, what's going to be expected of me and I think equally for professionals, it can be quite difficult to hear some stories and some messages where perhaps we don't always get it right. And that can feel difficult. And it seems to me that Whose Shoes was a really good way of, as you've said it, I think no hierarchy is just people coming together. Because my experience is everyone I come across in, certainly in the care group, is absolutely passionate about getting things better for children, young people, parents, carers, so it just felt like there was a real synergy and some of the stuff we were trying to do and Whose Shoes could really help, so that I guess that's where it's all started. And you came and ran an event for us didn't you using so much so many scenarios. So I describe, rightly or wrongly Gill, I describe Whose Shoes as like Trivial Pursuits, like you can have the Harry Potter edition or you could have 90 edition or the 80s edition or, or sometimes monopoly and get different monopolies can't you? So it's so flexible. So we looked through the scenarios and the editions if you like that already existed. The perinatal ones and the early years ones obviously chimed with some of the work that we do. So we held our first event, looking at sort of nought to two, and how we join up our services around that age range, because we had so many scenarios we could dig into. And I guess now we're looking at, you know, what can we do beyond that, but Rachel, it's probably a really good opportunity to bring you in. You've sat there listening to us chat. I wonder, like, if you can tell us a little bit about well (a) who you are, but (b), how did you discover Whose Shoes? And how did you get involved in it? Because I think it was that workshop that I've just mentioned.

Rachel Crook 13:17

Thanks, Lyse and yeah, so I'm Rachel, I'm a Professional Lead for nursing within our targeted services. So I work with lots of services providing varying different elements of care to children and families in their own homes in community settings, which is, you know, it's a, it's a privilege to work with so many teams. And, you know, ultimately, I would love to feel that, including as many of those professionals as possible within our Whose Shoes work can make, you know, make all the difference to our children and families. I had certainly heard of the Whose Shoes podcast and listened to a few before the event, but I don't think I'd quite connected the dots until I was there. And so So yeah, it was it was fantastic to come along to the event. And also sort of to, perhaps I should also mention that I went to the event sort of with my mommy hat on as well as my professional hat on, because I've got two girls that have got some, some additional needs, and have been under quite a few of our services as well. So I was able to give that insight. And it certainly has changed the way that I look at some of our systems and processes. Since having my own children and sort of trying to navigate a system, I would have thought I knew quite well. And actually, it's quite different from a different perspective. One of the interesting sort of analogies I use when I talk about Whose Shoes is sort of consider everybody sitting around the table is you know, is looking at a beach ball, you know, your beach ball, it's all of its different colours, everyone's looking at the same beach ball. But everyone can see a different colour. And that's the key isn't it with, with our children and families, everybody's looking at the same, the same situation, the same set of circumstances, but people are seeing different things. And it's helping us all to come together and to and to really understand that. So yeah, so we've found we've become a bit of a Whose Shoes on tour me and my...I carry round the Whose Shoes ballgame in the boot of the car. Just basically to introduce it to people to take the mystery out of it. We don't play it everywhere I go, but we get it, you know, I get it out of the box. And if I'm at a face-to-face meeting somewhere, I'll just get a few scenarios out, get the board game out so people can get a bit of a feel for it. And I tend to tell people it's a it's a conversation starter, you know, it's a pull to start the conversation. And then the conversation goes in whichever direction it sort of, you know, wishes almost so, so yeah, I'm quite excited about where we could get to using the game. And with that real, real coproduction, like Gill says not tick box, you know, not paying lip service, but doing it properly, doing it properly. And we're looking at, you know, really targeting sort of families that we work with that we know and lots of our services to just try and explain it a little bit more, not just an email in their inbox, maybe a phone call and a chat about the game to see if they would come along and share their experiences to try and really get that rich conversation in the room.

Lyse Edwards 16:15

Because it's the power of stories, isn't it? And I think Rachel, you told your story, but I think, Gill, you talk a lot I think in Whose Shoes about the power of stories and some of the poems and stories? I think they work as really good conversation starters. Often we go into a workshop and think, Well, what's the problem we're trying to solve? But I think starting with the stories and the poems and the scenarios is a real good way into actually working out what is the problem we're trying to solve?

Rachel Crook 16:40

Absolutely. And I think if we consider the personalization that Gill mentioned right at the beginning, the whole reason for Whose Shoes, you know, as a paediatric nurse, right from the beginning of your training, we're taught holistic care, we're taught look at the child as a whole look at the family as a whole. My experience as a as a parent of services is that we don't look at the family as a whole. And we don't look at a child as a whole, we look at one little one little bit of it. And actually very few people will connect the dots in terms of the different elements of care that a child requires. And maybe the wide of that and bringing all of that together. So I think it links absolutely right back to Gill's very first thoughts, you know, around designing the game around that personalization, that person centred, you know, family centred holistic care, which is what we're all striving for.

Gill Phillips 17:40 

I think one thing that people don't necessarily realise, and which is basically what takes all of my time is the kind of care and research and development that goes into writing the actual scenarios, and they can end up really, really simple, but I think the thing that is different is that they can sometimes be exactly the elephant in the room. So a scenario can be the problem. So for example, you might have I remember one of the very, very early scenarios was a family carers saying, well, it's all very well coming along to these events, I've been to several of them, but then nothing ever changes. So that can come out as an actual scenario without someone having to say that. And then that person might think, well, that's me. And look, they're recognising that. So let's move beyond that. Or, for example, in our maternity work, it might be a midwife saying, Well, that's all very well, you want me to do all this extra stuff. But sometimes I don't even get the chance to stop and go to the toilet or have a drink. And you can almost see the physical relief in people as they're, what they're thinking inside of themselves comes out. And then people are talking about that, and what can be different, rather than them sort of sitting there bottled up and thinking when nobody really understands what the real world is like?

Rachel Crook 18:52

Yeah, you're absolutely right. Yeah. And that's part of what I've been trying to do is, you know, reaching out to teams and saying, We know you're really busy, we know you're going to struggle to take this time out. So let me try and explain some of the benefits, how it might look how it might feel how the day might go. So then they have a better idea of what they are choosing to take their time out for. And there is such value in it. But it is so very difficult for our clinicians and our, you know, our frontline staff to be able to take that time out. And it's sort of respecting that. That's the place that our, you know, our nurses and our professionals are in so helping them to understand the benefit. And also, are there any ways in which we can support them to be able to take that timeout to be able to then come and join in with events like these? So yeah, one thing that I scribbled down that I did want to mention, was regarding a friend of gels, who's also going to be with us for the events in May, and we, you know, we feel say we're so pleased and proud that she's able to join us and is a lovely lady called Yvonne Newbold, who is the founder of Newbold hope now are absolutely so inspired by Yvonne and have been for years and years, and I've used her words within training, you know, in my background in our complex care team for some time, and there's a particular YouTube video where she refers to meeting, you know, certain professionals in their journey, who have gone over and above, and she describes these professionals as people who are swimming against the tide, you know, and she does allude to this in the, in the more recent TED Talk, and I've, you know, I've mentioned this clip, use this clip for a long time. And it kind of resonates with me in different ways. There's the sadness in a way in me that we feel that that person is swimming against the tide. But there's also that, that drive to be that person that is swimming against the tide, and to enable our nurses and our professionals to be those people that can swim against the tide, you know, so it's how do we support them to do that? And how do we do that ourselves? How do we be that that different person, how do we swim against the tide? So? So yeah, that again, to me, these, these are all the benefits of bringing as many different people into the room with as much diversity as we possibly can.

Lyse Edwards 21:16 

So while we're talking about connections, and I'm really glad you mentioned, Yvonne, we nearly forgot that she was we could have got through the whole podcast without talking about Yvonne. So thanks, Rachel, for bringing her in. And I'm delighted she's going to be with us on the day is the same much power in her stories. And I think, probably another podcast, I wonder if I could persuade Yvonne to do a podcast with us about her experiences. So much that resonates I'm sure with local families, the issues that she's encountered, and I think your story about swimming against the tide is really important. And maybe there's a bit of me that's hoping we could change the tide. I don't know, maybe we could change the tide to swim in a better direction. But it reminds me of another link that Gill's made with myself and Florence Wilcock, who's an obstetrician who's used Whose Shoes in another context and very much around this sort of maternity experience work. But that was the conversation I had with Florence, Flo as Gill calls her, over Christmas was how do we make time in people's days? Or how do we enable people give people the permission to come and do this and spend the time and Florence has been thinking about ways to sort of do mini Whose Shoes events or just think about Whose Shoes at the end of a ward round. But also, she sort of advocated for, you know, trying to find the timeout to do it. She said she finds that people find it so sort of restorative really and my mum says a change is as good as a rest. So sometimes it's good to just do something different and think about different things, but also enables you then to go back, get a bit of your mojo back I think sometimes get a bit of what you know what brought you into this in the first place, but also just spark some simple ideas. And I just I know, Gill, from our first workshop. There was a few ideas that just receded from that room that teams have gone off to do actually nothing to do with naught to two year olds, which actually was the focus. So I think, looked after children's team that went had an idea that sparked from that day that they've taken forward. And one of the physios that was there, liked the idea of Whose Shoes so much that looking at different sides of the beach ball, looking at different types of perspective, she sort of took that philosophy into supervision sessions to say, Okay, now we'll think about this incident or case from the professionals perspective, right, let's go and sit in another metaphorical chair and think about it from the parents perspective. So I think, I don't know what this event in May is going to enable. And I think that's the exciting part of it, actually, it will emerge from the event. And it could be a big thing, or it could be lots of small things. But actually, sometimes lots of small things make a really big difference. So that's exciting, too. So I absolutely recognise those challenges. And sometimes wish I had a magic wand, I could stop time or freeze time and allow people to take the time out. But I'm also aware of what taking that timeout can enable for people just in terms of their own resilience, actually, because it's a different thing. It's a different day, it's getting their head into a different space, but also just some of the ideas that it sparks and the connections it sparks Gill and, and those links because sometimes that's as you said earlier, you find someone that solved a problem or Gill, you'll know someone that you can connect someone with that can solve a problem or help move something forward. And the pledges that come out of the day, and the lemon lightbulb moments, Gill, you probably want to tell us what one of those is that come out of the day, can be surprising.

Gill Phillips 24:39

Lemon light bulb moments really aren't you can see in people's eyes, it might be a clinician who's used a certain word. In it, it could be something as simple as that they've used something in their practice. So like Flo, Florence, realised reassurance. And she wrote a poem about it, and we use it in Whose Shoes so her clinical practice was that somebody had come along, perhaps, you know, a mental health problem or a physical problem. And flow knows it's very, very normal at that stage of pregnancy. And she'd explained that she'd explained that, and then she write in the notes, reassured, and she said, I never use that word again, because I don't know what that person was reassured. That's their perspective, you know, my perspective is that I explained it and tried to reassure them that that was normal in. So it's that I think that would be a good lemon light bulb, that you suddenly just see something differently. And it would be an example like that. I think the other thing to mention, I mean, you've been talking about little things and big things, I mean, to totally inspire people. And in terms of you know, you won't know what will come out of your events. But if the right people go in with the right attitude, there will be things that come from the event. And in Liverpool, it was a new neonatal surgical unit. I think it's like the best story because they were able to submit a business case, this was all to a children's hospital, and Liverpool Women's Hospital. 

And they set out to work together with a fantastic and other fantastic person consultant paediatrician, Joanne Minford. And they didn't know at the beginning of the work that that's what they were going to end up with or even asked for, but through genuine CO production and listening to people that emerged and they were able to say, Well look, by listening to our people, and the physical distance between the two hospitals, and transporting very, very sick babies. Actually, we need a neonatal surgical unit and it is being built now at all the hay hospital, and it's actually got Whose Shoes can light coloured frontage. Now, I'd like to think that's big, it might be subliminal, but that's the fact of what's happening. And it's very, very exciting. Or it might be, you know, very little things. But of course, for people the little things, the big things or they can add up together. At the other thing I wanted to say is, you know, we talked about crowdsourcing scenarios Now, depending on the projects we're doing, we're either using existing Whose Shoes material, or with an opportunity to develop more bespoke material where you've got that opportunity at MPFT, because we're doing this project, if there are any in it by perhaps listening to this podcast and thinking, Well, my big beef or my fantastic example of good practice that really, you know, I'd like to share. And obviously we want to bring in lots of positive examples so that people are inspired. Let us know.

Lyse Edwards 7:40

That's a really good point, Gill, isn't it? So back to my Harry Potter edition and my whatever, we we've got loads of scenarios around perinatal, and not to that we've already dug into and I know our perinatal team are also running a Whose Shoes event also in May actually. So this does have ripples. This this is our sort of first one in the series of work with you that's a bit more bespoke and we wanted to go for something that was quite generic so that everyone could get involved and get a taste of Whose Shoes. Because I think once that's happened, people will start thinking oh, well, we could dig a bit deeper in this area or that area. So we've gone for integrating care and joining care up around children and young people for our first event, because I think, as a care group that provides such a wide range of services to young people and families, we provide perinatal mental health, and we provide Health Visiting, School nursing, we've got a range of specialist nursing, and community nursing, allied health professionals, mental health services for children. And we came together as an organisation in 2018. As a care group, I think, around 2019, when I joined the trust, that was the that was the challenge really how do we bring this all together and integrate things around families. And we're still on that journey. So for me, it feels like a real topic to dig into. And that's why we've gone to the 24th May, because no matter where you work in our care group, I think that's, you know, something that will resonate around how do we join up care? So that's why we've gone with that particular topic. But as you say, we're really keen to crowdsource scenarios, poems, you know, if anyone's a budding poet out there, and that is, from all of those perspectives, we've talked about, isn't it? professional, parent, carer, young person themselves, I would love it, maybe I don't know how many young people will listen to this podcast, but it would be fantastic to get so young people's stories or poems, or just a little snippet, and also people in power. So you know, commissioners, people that have got resources, chief executives, executive directors, so yeah, call to arms to anyone that's got any latent could contribute to developing this, we linking in through our involvement team, and their email addresses involvement@mpft.nhs.uk. So that's a good way to connect in. Obviously, if you work in the trust in the care group, you can reach out to myself to Rachel, we've got some of the Whose Shoes champions and we sending around who's news, which again, I think a pinched with pride from another one of your projects Gill, we didn't come up with that.

Gill Phillips 30:13

That was from Kingston, so Florence at Kingston, we got support from the chief executive there to do some Whose Shoes work very similar with the across the hospital. And a couple of things to mention. So that's where who's news came from somebody called Kate Willett, who was amazing, who put together like, just like you're doing lace now monthly newsletters to sort of keep the energy alive. And I think what I loved about Kate Grimes was the name of the chief executive, she basically had some key ideas as to what she wanted us to do up front. But also the courage if you like, or the kind of vision to say, go well with the energies. And you know, not to map it all out at the beginning of the project. And I think that's just the same as we're doing with MPFT. And we ended up doing workshops in their main theatres, day theatres admin, obviously, maternity and so on. But, you know, I think Co-production is not about having all the answers at the beginning, it's about being open to find out what needs to happen.

Lyse Edwards 31:18

I think that is the approach we're trying to take and why we started with something that was very broad, because I really want to explore and find out where the energy is and follow it. So that's another reason I'd like as many people as we can get to our first event in Stafford on the on the 24th of May, because then we'll find the energy in the room won't have to it will be there, the scenarios and the next steps or hopefully emerged from that. So yeah, that's another reason we're doing this podcast really to inform people about it, get people involved, but get ideas and get those lemon light bulbs in other people's heads about wouldn't it be great if we did this for X, Y, or Z and we'd be really up for that we're going quite organically and where the energy goes, I think on this project.

Gill Phillips 32:03

And I think be inspired by other people. So you know, we've mentioned in the course of the podcast, Yvonne Newbold so on my podcast, Wild Card Whose Shoes, I've done an episode with Yvonne, so if you want to hear more about Vons work, you could listen to that one. I've done an episode with Rachel. So Rachel, mainly with your mummy hat on, wasn't it talking about you know, using services, really lovely conversation, but very powerful. And also we're talking about here involving more young people. One of the episodes is with Aisha Farooq. Now she's a proper national mover and shaker with the NHS youth team. And in a listen to Aisha listened to Daisy Mackay, who's also young and became a wheelchair user in it just brings in all sorts of different aspects, but I think there's material out there already that we can build on and people can listen to.

Lyse Edwards 33:01 

Absolutely, and I'm a big fan of a podcast, listening to them usually rather than recording them, I try and listen to them while I go for a run, it makes the running a bit less painful if I'm listening to something interesting, so I would definitely advocate Gill's podcasts and we do we put them in the show notes? Is that what you say on a podcast? I think it is. So we'll put them in the show notes of the MPFT podcasts. So you can link through and see some of those connections I think we're weaving through this work. And yeah,  was trying to get Aisha to come into the care group. She's an amazing young woman, she had an exam on the day that we were hoping to get her and I still got her email in my inbox, I need to connect back in with her, because she launched the Core 24 Plus five for young people. And I was like, Oh, I wanted to come and do that for us. And she agreed to do it. But it was the day of her exam. So obviously, that had to take priority. And I don't know how some of these movers and shakers from the Youth Forum, do it because they were all studying full time and moving and shaking full time. But it's amazing. They're really inspirational, young people. But I'm sure we've got those people in our midst, too in Staffordshire. So, you know, if you're listening to this, and you want to get involved, involvement at mpft.nhs.uk, drop them a note and they'll link you into us and they'll link you into the project. And we'd be excited to work with any partners or, you know, organisations that support young people as well would be great to connect in with through this work.

Gill Phillips 34:25

And sometimes these days, there are ways of someone like Aisha or somebody local in Staffordshire, and it's a big county can't come along on that particular day. Perhaps you know, we could plan in a little couple of minutes video with them talking as part of the event. So for our maternity events, Jackie Dunkley Bent the chief midwifery officer has been incredibly supportive. And she's quite regularly sent a little introductory video that we've shown at the beginning. And it just makes the event more special. She's done a bespoke video about that particular event, that particular hospital trust or whatever. And people feel that yeah, we're part of something bigger here, you know.

Lyse Edwards 35:08

Yeah, and it's a good point isn't because we've agonised a bit about what day of the week to do this on. And it is a school day. So young people in school, you know, I don't think the teachers would be very pleased if they don't go in. And also, we did wonder about actually did they would the young people want to play a board game with their parents, you know, maybe they want to have different conversations. So we are linking in, I think, via our involvement team with Staffordshire council for voluntary youth services to think how we do a youth event and see how that goes, I do this part in the jail that wouldn't just whether young people play board games these days, but I'm sure I'm sure we can bring it back, bring it back, it's still a great way to engage people and have a conversation.

Gill Phillips 35:45

And we have done.

Rachel Crook 35:47

Maybe it needs to move on to an app, Gill. Maybe it's an app next?

Gill Phillips 35:51

Well, we are working on an app, actually, the family integrated care project is sort of leading the way on that one. But coming back to Lyse's point, we have done that. So leads I think have led the way in terms of using Whose Shoes, the board game with young people. And again, you know, you talk to them. And for whatever reason, they decided without looking at any of the poems that they weren't interested in poems, and they wanted like little wacky statements and little cartoons and things instead of the poems. And we did a really extraordinary event with them around transition. And I think that's something MPFT might look at the transition from Children's Services to adult services is a really big deal for children and families. And, you know, we're talking about children who perhaps relate to more than one service, several services. So what does that mean if you move from children services to adult services? Because that might be multiple transitions? And how join that will that be? So there's loads of things that we could explore?

Lyse Edwards 36:51

We absolutely could. And I've got so many ideas in my head about where we could use Whose Shoes and I think partner organisations are sick of me saying "We could use Whose Shoes for this". So hopefully, they'll come along, and it will take some of the mystery about what it is I keep advocating for. But I want to see what the energy is amongst the professionals within the care group and partners, rather than it'd be all my ideas, really, because I don't think it'll work if it's just where I think they should go. So hence, starting quite broad, and then going where the energy and the people take it really and hoping we can find ways to make space for this in what I know a really busy jobs. But I think it's so important to take time out and stop and think and that's the way that will improve services and do it in a really coproduced way. So I think we probably should plug our events. So it's Wednesday, the 24th of May, there is an Eventbrite link to book on but if you get back to that involvement@mpft.nhs.uk, they can send you that out, because obviously we will be constrained by the size of the room. Although, Gill, I know serendipitously you say will fill whatever seats get put out but we will have some constraints. It's in a Stafford venue, but as I say, if you contact involvement@mpft.nhs.uk, they will be able to send you all the information. And I think I should also plug that our perinatal team are using Whose Shoes at an event in May. That is on the 3rd May 9:30 till 4:30. That's to help them shape specialist community perinatal mental health services. So if that's a topic close to your heart, then again, through involvement@mpft.nhs.uk, they'll be able to signpost you to that registration form and tell you more about that. So there's quite a lot of Whose Shoes bubbling in the care group and maybe beyond, Gill, you know, we're bringing other with us as we go.

Gill Phillips 38:50 

We'll see! We'll see!

Lyse Edwards 38:52 

So thank you so much, both of you for spending this morning with me to talk about this. I'm really excited to see what emerges and develops and perhaps we'll do another podcast after our event to feedback to listeners how it went.

Rachel:

Get to play with some new technology, so definitely.!

Gill:

I think you’ve got the bug now, Lyse. (laughter). I can see your eyes … lit up. 

So that was the podcast we recorded for Mpft. I
hope it helps to bring not just more people in, but different people. People perhaps from partner organisations, looking in and wondering what we are up to.
Joined up care can’t happen unless everybody gets involved; parents and young people feel confident to be part of things and they feel that their voices are being listened to. So there is a lot of opportunity here. Watch this space and, as Lyse says, who knows we might do another podcast
to update you.