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Fostering restorative practice within and between teams

by Lesley Parkinson | May 12, 2022 | in Boosting capacity challenge | North West

The Restorative Thinking team is working alongside UHMBT medical teams, HR, Inclusion & Engagement to develop day-to-day restorative relationships and communications.  This is a small pilot intended to test how far restorative practice can enhance:

  • Team cohesion and culture change
  • Psychological safety
  • Relationships with patients
  • Positive mental health and well-being
  • Greater equality of voice
  • Problem-solving and co-production
  • Improved communication
  • Making difficult conversations easier
  • Staff retention and a reduction in sick leave

These outcomes will have a positive impact on the themes identified within the 'boosting capacity challenge'.

Restorative Thinking has been working with colleagues across the public sector for over ten years, with notable successes and a strong evidence base; we are now working with NHS colleagues to foster restorative principles and skills at work and home.

A key consideration is how effectively restorative practice fosters psychological safety; when this is present within and between teams, we create an environment where mistakes are seen as opportunities for learning; all ideas are respected; people feel safe to share and to speak out.  Psychological safety is proven to be the key factor in all of the most effective teams and we can therefore expect positive outcomes from NHS staff engaging with restorative practice.

We'd love this approach to be adopted more widely across NHS Trusts to support a range of strengths, needs and intended outcomes.

Our key contacts at UHMBT are Sally Comber and Janette Thorpe from the Organisational Development team.

Is your idea a commercial offer , or does it have the potential to be a commercial offer?

Yes

Which part of the pathway does your idea focus on?

All parts of the pathway

Files
Restorative Thinking with UHMBT information leaflet FINAL.
Humanizing harm Using a restorative approach to heal and learn from adverse events 1
Idea image
edited on May 17, 2022 by Lesley Parkinson
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Gabrielle Law May 19, 2022

Hi Lesley, Thank you so much for adding your idea to #SolvingTogether its great to read that this is working well at UHMBT! What do you think we need to pay attention to, to make it really successful across all NHS Trust?

Lesley Parkinson May 19, 2022

Hi Gabrielle, thank you for your question. If we were to invite all NHS Trusts to engage with restorative practice as a mechanism for improving relationships and communications within and between all teams, and for fostering psychological safety, with the ultimate aim of improving patient experience and safety, we would need to:

1) As an engagement exercise, generate short video case studies from our UHMBT pilot to help share our definition of restorative practice, to show what this looks and feels like and to illustrate the change that restorative practice can foster with medical teams, HR, Inclusion & Engagement, Learning and Development, Business partners. Identify colleagues from UHMBT to support the wider roll out of RP with other Trusts.

2) Learning from our larger scale projects with Local Authorities and the evaluations of these projects, work with each NHS Trust to ensure we have the buy-in of senior leadership and to collaborate with this team to identify the right place in the achievement agenda for restorative practice to sit and to provide the training/coaching/collaboration needed for the SLT to begin to draw on RP in their leadership role.

3) Make our e-CPD, 'Restorative Thinking at Work' accessible to all staff (2-hour course introducing key restorative principles and skills).

4) Offer short 'deep dive' sessions for all staff to further explore key principles of RP and to apply RP to specific workplace scenarios.

5) Facilitate regular action learning sets for all staff at times to suit all shift patterns, to give the challenge and support needed for colleagues to develop their RP skills.

6) Identify, challenge and support restorative practice 'champions' in each Trust, to guide the sustainability of RP, identify and share best practice.

7) Listen with intent throughout the steps above and reflect this in our collaboration with NHS colleagues to foster and sustain real ownership of RP within each Trust.