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Health Connect Coaching an innovative approach to boosting capacity and improving outcomes
We know that more and more people are living with one or more health condition, requiring support from our health and care services. We also know that many people do not have the sufficient level of knowledge, skills and confidence to optimise their self-care capabilities and as a result experience poorer outcomes and seek greater healthcare support.
In Torbay and South Devon we have co-designed with our population a novel and innovative solution to delivering Personalised Care and improving an individuals self-care capability. Coordinators recruit, train, support and supervise volunteers with lived-experience of managing their health conditions well and match them with others who require additional support.
Working with specialist secondary care teams and primary care colleagues, both potential coaches and peers who require coaching and support are identified. Then over a 6 month period, peers receive targeted health coaching conversations using a tapered empowering model, focusing on what matters to them, building optimal self-management capability, social connections and resilience.
This model is cost effective and scalable with each full-time coodinator being able to manage between 50-100 volunteer coaches and each coach having the potential to support up to 5 people a year.
Is your idea a commercial offer , or does it have the potential to be a commercial offer?
No
Which part of the pathway does your idea focus on?
All parts of the pathway
This is a great idea Helen and great to see this is doing well in Torbay and South Devon! I have tagged my colleague who also works within Torbay and South Devon Christina.
Users tagged:
This is interesting and using volunteers is a good idea. I feel that running a well coordinated volunteer programme can be difficult. A while ago and as part of the New Car Models work there was a good piece of work that used Volunteers and the third sector in partnership to deliver a model around care homes. This is not directly comparable to what is described here, but commissioning the third sector to provide and manage this type of scheme may make it more sustainable. It would be possible to look at the benefits, as getting data from volunteer schemes can be difficult.
Hi, this sounds like a really positive initiative and I have some experience that may be relevant. I used to work setting up and managing Health Trainers services and self-management programmes which sounds very similar to this. A couple of things I would say often become challenges in the longer term with projects like this:
- Supporting people health behaviours (even as a peer) is actually a difficult task and often there is a high rate of attrition from the initial group of volunteers. It tends to be the case that the volunteers who already have relevant qualifications or are interested in working in health are the ones who succeed so I would recommend being a bit selective about who you recruit at the outset.
- These kind of services often place too little emphasis on promotion and referral generation. There need to be some effective professionals around to engage with HCPs and generate interest in the service or you can end up with the volunteers sitting around idle. Also, in order retain the skilled staff and develop strong links to primary care etc it is really important to make sure that commissioners don't pump in money for a few years then lose interest but actually commit to the initiative for a longer period of time.
Just my thoughts. Good luck with it.