AQuA Staff Support Key 103 Christmas Present Appeal for Local Children and Young People

Staff from the North West’s NHS quality improvement organisation, the Advancing Quality Alliance (AQuA), have been helping to spread some Christmas cheer to local children and young people, by supporting Key 103 Radio’s annual ‘Mission Christmas’ fundraising appeal.

AQuA staff support Key 103 Mission Christmas

Staff have been helping to make Christmas a little brighter by buying extra gifts to donate to the appeal, to be given out to disadvantaged youngsters across Greater Manchester.

Mission Christmas helps to raise money and supports local children living in poverty. With an estimated 1 in 3 children living in poverty, last year it raised over £2 million in cash and gifts to help over 51, 500 of the region’s 0-18 year olds.

Improvement Advisor Eleanor Peet, who coordinated the appeal for AQuA, said:

“We’ve had a fantastic response and it’s been really nice to see staff donating their gifts to help make Christmas morning that little bit special for local kids and young people.

“Whilst we work across the North West, we are based in Sale, so we do like to support local causes when we can, and Key 103’s Mission Christmas is a great way we can do our bit to share some festive cheer.”

You can also find out more about Mission Christmas in this video, or follow #MissionChristmas on Twitter for more updates.

AQuA Executive Coaching Opportunities Now Available for Members

The Advancing Quality Alliance (AQuA) is pleased to announce that we are now offering Executive Coaching opportunities to individual senior leaders across our member organisations.

This is an exciting chance for members to work alongside one of our team of highly experienced improvement coaches, and receive support to explore how they can best address their personal performance to lead organisational or local system priorities and challenges.

Open to executives, non-executives and senior leaders, feedback from previous participants has shown that many of our members have appreciated the opportunity to undertake external development with the team.

Other benefits members have gained include:

• Increased confidence and support to lead complex change initiatives that span organizational boundaries 
• Improved relationships with multi-agency partners 
• Better recognition for local or national change programmes 
• Increased team performance

Accessing Our Support

The type of support we are able to offer is flexible and depends on the needs of the individual. However, there are a several conditions before this offer can commence:

• You must work for an AQuA member organisation for the duration of your coaching 
• Before you and your coach commit to a coaching relationship, we will arrange a preliminary meeting or phone call to explore why you want coaching, what you hope to achieve and what you are looking for in a coach. Only if both parties agree that executive leadership coaching is appropriate and that they could work together will the coaching proceed. 
• You and your coach will agree to and sign a coaching contract outlining what you both commit to. 
• As part of the contract you and your coach will agree a set number of coaching sessions, the duration and location of each session and whether the coaching is face to face or virtual. This will vary from client to client. 
• The detail of the coaching conversations will be completely confidential.

Find Out More & Apply

In order to apply for coaching, you must be a senior leader working in an AQuA member organisation for the duration of the agreed period.

If you would like to find out more or apply for this opportunity, please send the following details to Jascinth.Ward@srft.nhs.uk:

• Your name, role, organization and contact details (including office & mobile numbers) 
• An outline of your coaching objectives and what you would like to achieve from this support

Following this, we will then arrange a preliminary meeting or phonecall to explore why you want coaching, and what you hope to achieve from it.

If it agreed coaching support it appropriate for you, both you and your coach will draw up a coaching contract to outline key commitments. This will also cover what type of support best suits your needs, whether this is face-to-face or remote, and the location, duration and how many sessions this will cover.

Details discussed during coaching sessions will be completely confidential.

Our coaches

Below you can find more information about our team of coaches.

Elizabeth Bradbury, Director

Elizabeth is a highly experienced leadership coach, with an established national reputation for coaching across executive and non-executive board and governing body members, senior managers and clinicians. Much of this experience has been in support of leading complex organisational or system transformation, large scale service reconfiguration, and performance improvement.

Her calm, friendly approach combines empathy and constructive challenge, to support participants to effectively develop and analyse strategic priorities and issues, and devise realistic options in keeping with their local context and culture.

By helping to set clear, results-oriented goals to her coaching, Elizabeth has helped a number of participants to further develop their leadership capabilities, increase their presence and strategic impact across multiple partners, and develop their role as effective system leader.

Elizabeth is also a registered nurse with extensive experience across emergency care and hospital management, and holds a Level 7 qualification in Executive Leadership Coaching & Mentorship. She also recently served on the Board of the international Foundation for Integrated Care.

Lesley Massey, Director

Lesley is an accredited ILM Level 7 leadership coach, and leads the expert faculty for AQuA’s Board development programme; supporting senior executive teams to meet challenges around complex change and developing strategic quality improvements.

Starting her career as an Occupational Therapist, Lesley has a wealth of experience gained from roles across frontline clinical specialist care, and operational and strategic management positions.
Throughout her coaching, Lesley has supported a wide range of senior leaders to improve their ability to manage challenging relationships, and deliver action focused, practical outcomes for staff and patients.

Using a combination of reflective listening and goal setting, she encourages participants to challenge their existing thinking and approaches. Her approach works particularly well with those who are new to leadership roles, to help them build teams and organisational forms, manage new relationships across different organisations, and develop their strategic thinking and presence.

Helen Kilgannon, Head of System Transformation

With over ten years’ experience in coaching and mentoring, Helen has completed a range of NW Leadership Academy coaching programmes and CDP, and is currently studying a level 7 qualification in leadership coaching. As a CIPD qualified HR professional, she is also able to support individuals through the NHS Leadership Framework 360 assessment and feedback.

Helen’s approach works well for people looking to improve their personal effectiveness particularly in times of change, take a real practical approach to delivering their goals and manage relationships to maximise personal impact. Her clients have included Directors of Nursing, Consultants, Assistant Directors, and senior operational managers.

She has worked in a range of provider and strategic organisations at Assistant Director level. Previously working as an Assistant Director for Organisational Learning and Development in a mental health and community provider, key areas of work have included leading coaching strategy, cultural development, health and wellbeing, communications, and learning and development.

She has led major programmes of transformational change regionally and operationally, taking programmes from inception to implementation and evaluation. Her role in AQuA as Head of System Transformation is to support systems to develop and implement new models of care, with a strong emphasis on leadership for place/system leadership.

Blog - Smoothing the Flow - David Fillingham

In his latest blog, AQuA Chief Executive David Fillingham shares his thoughts on adapting Lean thinking within health and social care, and how this can be supported through improving Whole System Flow.

AQuA Chief Executive,
David Fillingham CBE

Having had six years seeking to introduce Toyota thinking (where the Lean methodology was created) into healthcare at Bolton Hospital, and another six seeking to apply it more widely through AQuA, I've come to believe that it is definitely a case of needing to adapt not just adopt.

Many attempts to use lean in healthcare have floundered because people have a mental model of hospitals as factories, and therefore of patients as the raw material on a production line. And we both know, this cannot be the case...healthcare is the ultimate service industry.

Most of this work has concentrated just on hospitals and has failed to engage adequately with staff working in primary and community areas, in mental health or in social care. Many of the problems currently being experienced in A&E departments are a reflection of challenges outside of hospitals

What's worse, lean initiatives have all too often been about management consultants being employed to foist lean onto a resentful workforce.

In The Challenge and Potential of Whole System Flow, our joint paper with The Health Foundation, we seek to address this in a number of ways:

Defining the Value

Firstly, value (the aim of creating flow) needs to be defined by the customer not the provider. In healthcare this implies a huge shift towards shared decision making with patients, co-production, and asset based approaches to community development. Techniques such as experience based co-design are a valuable way of addressing this in quality improvement work.

Focusing on the Whole System

Secondly, we have emphasised the need to use all of the resources in a community, not just those of the hospital. We have also taken flow to be not solely about the flow of patients through a system (which risks detracting from a patient focused, care giving ethos) but also about the flow of staff, information and resources.

With increasing numbers of frail older people needing support to live independently, we expect there to be increased flows of those components out of hospital and into community settings.

Addressing ‘Failure Demand’

Thirdly, this helps address the lean concept of 'failure demand' which is much more relevant in service sectors than in manufacturing. Many of the patients who 'flow' into hospitals should never need to. The biggest waste in healthcare is avoidable ill health.

Engaging the Frontline

Finally, all of this needs to be done with the deep and genuine engagement of frontline workers across disciplines and across care sectors. What we need are improvement approaches that give them full ownership of designing and delivering new care systems where staff, information, resources and, where necessary patients, flow smoothly without waste, delay, frustration or harm.

Throughout 2016/17, AQuA, supported by The Health Foundation, have held a series of events exploring Whole System Flow in health and social care. For the latest updates, follow @AQuA_NHS or #WholeSystemFlow on Twitter.

AQuA and The Health Foundation Publish Joint Report on Whole System Flow

Click the image to download the report

The Advancing Quality Alliance (AQuA), in partnership with The Health Foundation, are pleased to announce the publication of a joint report on our work exploring Whole System Flow across health and social care systems.

The report, The Challenge and Potential of Whole System Flow: Improving flow across whole health and social care systems, was co-written by AQuA Chief Executive David Fillingham CBE and The Health Foundation’s Bryan Jones and Penny Pereira, and details key findings and research gained from the past 12 months of working on this new programme.

Speaking on its publication, David Fillingham said:

AQuA Chief Executive
David Fillingham

“Understanding and improving Whole System Flow should be a major priority, not just for colleagues working in the NHS, but also those across the wider health and social care landscape.

“Working on this new programme in partnership with The Health Foundation has been a fantastic opportunity. We’ve had a great response to our work so far, and this report is the product of the drive and commitment of our staff and of the many AQuA members and partners who have made such valuable contributions.

“Whilst its findings may not offer the ‘magic bullet’ to solving flow that some may seek, it does offers insights into how we can work together to tackle this complex challenge, and so secure better outcomes for patients.”

Penny Pereira, Deputy Director of Improvement at The Health Foundation, said

“At its heart, improving flow is about tackling the delays and duplication that are frustrating for all those in the health and care system. Getting flow right is critical to the delivery of new service models, improving quality of care and productivity. But it’s the impact it will have on the daily experiences of service users and staff that matters most.

“We need to look well beyond seeking just quick fixes for A&E. Extending work on flow to span whole health and social care economies takes time and investment. If every organisation in each health and social care economy were able and willing to work collaboratively to design services that optimise flow, it could lead to major improvements in patient and service user experience and outcomes, as well as improved productivity. It is for these reasons that flow should be a top priority."

The report also acknowledges the contributions of AQuA staff Wendy Lewis, Andrew Wilson and David Dixon for their work throughout the programme.

Since May, AQuA have held a series of events exploring different aspects of Flow with both our members across the North West, and wider partners working across health and social care.

Download the report in full here.

Wendy Lewis, AQuA’s Whole System Flow Programme Lead, also shared her thoughts on working on this programme in her recent blog, which you can read here.

For latest updates on the programme, follow us on Twitter @AQuA_NHS or via the hashtag #SystemFlow.

AQuA Members Celebrate Leadership Success at North West Leadership Academy Awards

North West Leadership Academy's Managing Director
Deborah Davis opens the Awards

NHS leaders across the North West recently celebrated a night of success at the North West Leadership Academy’s annual Recognition Awards, for which AQuA was one of the sponsors.

The awards, held at the McDonald Kilhey Court Hotel in Standish, recognised the leading individuals and teams across all levels and professions of the NHS in the North West.

Speaking after the awards, Helen Kilgannon, AQuA’s Head of System Transformation, said:

“It was fantastic to join our colleagues at North West Leadership Academy in celebrating some of the region’s current and rising leaders across the NHS.

“These are individuals that have led some truly outstanding improvements to both patients’ health and experience of the NHS, and for the staff and colleagues they work with on a daily basis.

“AQuA work closely with many of these people, and we are really proud to have such a wealth of talent across the North West.”

AQuA members named among the winners included:

• Emerging Leader - Dr Benita Kane, Consultant in Respitory Medicine, University Hospital of South Manchester NHS Foundation Trust
• Inclusive Leader – Karmini McCann, Head of Workforce Futures, University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust
• Inspirational Leader – Linda Johnstone, Clinical Director, Cheshire & Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
• Leading and Developing People – Dave Sweeney, Deputy Chief Officer, NHS Halton CCG
• Leading Systems Transformation – Andrew Bennett, Chief Officer & Senior Responsible Officer, Better Care Together (Morecambe Bay Vanguard)
• Living the Values – Dr Neil Smith, GP Lead for Cancer, Pennine Lancashire, NHS East Lancashire & Blackburn with Darwen CCG
• Team Outstanding Achievement - Clinical – Prof. Cheng-Hock Toh, The Royal Liverpool & Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust
• Team Outstanding Achievement – Non Clinical – Organisational Development and Training team, University Hospitals of Central Manchester NHS Foundation Trust

Among the finalists in the Emerging Leader category was Dr Emmanuel Nsetubu, our AQ Clinical Lead for Sepsis, and Consultant Infectious Diseases Physician at The Royal Liverpool & Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust.

AQuA Fellow and Integrated Care Programme Director for Oldham CCG, Kath Wynne-Jones, was also among the finalists in the Leading Systems Transformation category.

For more information about the awards, please visit the North West Leadership Academy website, or you can follow the coverage from the night on Twitter at #NWawards16.