Blog: Funding boost for patient and public involvement
In this blog, Helen Smith – National Clinical Director for the Mental Health Safety Improvement Programme, Director for Quality Improvement for Devon Partnership NHS Trust, and South West Q Convenor – shares her experiences of the UK-Wide Q Community Event and the news that the SW AHSN’s QuIPPs (Quality Improvement Partner Panels) funding bid ‘Patients are equal partners in quality improvement’ was successful.
“Well what a day! We finally left the Q community event on the 19 September on the West of England AHSN mini bus exhausted but triumphant; our QuIPPs project secured £30,000 of funding. We were also delighted to see that the Time Bank project involving Prof Richard Byng – a South West Q member – was funded, as well as colleagues from the West of England receiving funding for their primary care project – Churchdown Connections.
This comes after a lot of hard work from Jono Broad, who leads the QuIPPs project as well as many others working at the South West AHSN. This journey began months ago with an idea shaped at home which was then shared with our national Q community colleagues for comment and improvement.
Over 180 projects were originally put forward, and after shaping and pruning using the collective expertise of the community, the projects were shortlisted and we made it to the final 25 – a range of incredible, innovative and exciting ideas from across health and social care settings throughout the UK.
On the day we, or rather Bettina Kluettgens – Clinical Director, Laura Hitt – Communications Officer (and Jono in spirit), pitched our project to attendees throughout the morning and then began the voting process. Every Q attendee had five votes to be distributed across five different projects and the top 15 across the post got funding….and we did it! The funding will allow us to evaluate our QuiPPs project and spread it nationally after the pilot in the South West.
The Q Exchange is an innovative new way for designing and funding projects. It uses the power of the people in the Q community to help design and refine projects, and then uses their collective voice to decide which should get funding. I am sure it has resulted in some creative, cross-sector projects being funded with a strong emphasis on working in close partnership with those who have lived experience of services. We look forward to getting our QuIPPs programme up and running and seeing what we can learn from the other 14 successfully funded programmes.”
For more information and to get involved, please email quipps@swahsn.com.
