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Fostering restorative practice within and between teams

by Lesley Parkinson | May 12, 2022 | in Thinking the unthinkable 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
  • Joint 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 'thinking the unthinkable challenge'. Strong, positive relationships within and between teams underpin everything else happening in our achievement agenda.

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

Its great to see you have added this idea on to thinking the unthinkable as well! Would love to know other peoples thoughts on this idea? :)

Leigh Kendall May 24, 2022

Thank you for sharing your idea. Have you seen the report Psychological Safety in the Real World of Health and Care - may be of interest https://horizonsnhs.com/psychological-safety-2021/

Lesley Parkinson May 24, 2022

Hi Leigh, thank you for sharing and yes, I've seen this guide; it's a great read, with some key insights. We are familiar with the work of Prof. Amy Edmondson.

Restorative practice provides a 'relationships framework', underpinned by key principles and skills, 'the way we do things round here.'

This framework guides our language and behaviours, alongside processes that foster equality of voice, transparency, honesty. We become purposeful about creating safe spaces to collaborate, drawing on models that guide the right balance of challenge and support in all our relationships.

This restorative and relational framework can be used deliberately to foster psychological safety within and between teams.

I think restorative practice provides a visible pathway towards becoming, or enhancing, a psychologically safe team.

Lesley Parkinson May 31, 2022

I should add that core elements of this idea are scalable; we introduce key restorative principles and skills via our short e-CPD course, 'Restorative Thinking at Work'.

This course alone introduces restorative practice in the context of working together, within and between teams, providing a shared framework for how we communicate, hold ourselves and others accountable, foster social capital and psychological safety.

Terence Bevington Jun 10, 2022

As the co-chair of the workstream reporting to the APPG looking into the application of restorative practices in health and other non-judicial settings, I am heartened to see that you are working with a Health Trust to develop this important and powerful work. We look forward to hearing how this work develops so that we can report on this within our inquiry.

Sally C Jun 16, 2022

We're really excited to be working with Restorative Relationships at Work and exploring the possibilities of how restorative practice can support improved relationships and communication within and between teams and across the wider organisation. This is underpinning a real shift in ethos and approach as part of our wider cultural transformation programme. As an organisation we have recognised that shifts in policy and delivery of traditional training will need to be supported by much deeper learning for individuals and teams.