Congratulations on your achievement, hopefully a nice early Christmas present for you and the team? Can you tell us what inspired you to sign up to the accreditation programme in the first place?
Well, I was quite new into the post, having moved to Brett Ward from Forensic Services. I was aware that we needed to make improvements to the service we were providing, and this seemed like a great way to get a better understanding of what we are doing well and what needs to improve from the service user perspective.
What was the experience like for you and for your team?
I wouldn’t say it was easy, but it was definitely worthwhile, not just in terms of the end product but also the process we had to go through.
Getting our staff team together, working out what evidence we need, and then going through that evidence and organising it, took quite a lot of time and energy. But that is the start of the learning process, and it’s really useful in bringing people together; so looking back we really value that.
What did you learn?
We learnt a lot, and it makes you realise that little things have a big impact. But I’d say the most important thing was that we needed to improve Carers involvement on the ward. We now have a Carers’ Lead for the ward working as a family liaison contact and facilitating carers clinics, that’s been a great development for us.
What advice would you give to teams who go through the process?
To be honest, we found it tricky working out what was the best evidence to support our self-assessment of some of the standards, I would really recommend reaching out to your Quality Assurance Manager before you complete your self-assessment to go through the standards, they can really help you to make sense of them and think through what evidence you need.
Thank you so much for your time, Maham, one final question, what would you say to teams who are considering signing up for the programme?
Go for it! That outside view on things from experts by experience is invaluable. And at the end it’s great reward for hard work – for us it was a real morale boost after working through some significant challenges.