BAPO

Executive

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Social Prescribing

RSPH have just launched a new framework for social prescribing for AHPs

Social prescribing, sometimes referred to as community referral, is a means of enabling people to be referred to a range of local, non-medical services. 

Recognising that people’s health is determined primarily by a range of social, economic and environmental factors, social prescribing seeks to address people’s needs in a holistic way. It also aims to support people to take greater control of their own health.

Social prescribing can meet a wide range of needs, with many schemes aiming to improve mental health and physical wellbeing. It can be used to support adults, young people and children as well as people with learning disabilities or mental health problems. It can take place in primary and secondary care. Social prescribing can also help to address social issues such as debt, unemployment, gambling and loneliness.

Social prescribing and community-based support is part of the NHS Long-Term Plan’s commitment to make personalised care[i] business as usual across the health and care system in England. The NHS Long Term Plan[ii] published in January 2019 has a commitment to personalised care and increasing access to social prescribing for the whole population. 

This approach to holistic care is not new to allied health professionals who frequently have conversations and provide support related to the wider factors influencing the health of the people they work with. 

To illustrate the way AHPs already support this agenda and to provide a framework to support them to do more; a new social prescribing framework for AHPs[iii] has been developed by the Royal Society for Public Health, Public Health England, NHS Improvement and NHS England along with AHP professional bodies and voluntary sector partners.

The framework is divided into 4 sections to reflect the varying intensity of AHP interventions, these include:

  • Active signposting – a light-touch approach where staff provide information and choice to signpost people to services, using local knowledge and resource directories.  This works best for clients who are confident and skilled enough to find their own way to services after a brief conversation. 
  • Referral to a link worker – In cases where a person needs more support than active signposting can provide, it may be appropriate to refer them to non-medical link workers who can provide more time to understand what matters to the individual and connect them to relevant community groups and other agencies for practical and emotional support.
  • Undertaking social prescribing – AHPs are likely to undertake social prescribing themselves when they are already providing long-term intensive support to a person as part of their job role. It will involve supporting people to work out which local groups and services would be beneficial to them and helping them to access them in a variety of ways. You may need to work through multiple options with a client and accompany them on first visits. Some AHPs are likely to do this than others because of the nature of their role.
  • Supporting the development of social prescribing – for example by providing community groups and services and providing guidance, supervision and training to link workers.

Over 2500 AHPs engaged with the development of this framework by completing a survey, joining a twitter chat, providing feedback on early drafts and submitting case studies.  This shows the enthusiasm for this agenda amongst the professions.  We hope the framework will support all AHPs to articulate their current role in social prescribing and consider how they could do more.

Click here to access the site

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[i] https://www.england.nhs.uk/personalisedcare/

[ii] https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-term-plan/

[iii] https://www.rsph.org.uk/our-work/resources/ahp-social-prescribing-frameworks/ahps-promoting-growing-and-developing-social-prescribing.html

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One Year On – The SIHED programme and I See The Difference campaign

                                      

The SIHED (Strategic Interventions in Health Education Disciplines) programme is a £3m, three-year initiative to help build the sustainability of the allied health professions (AHPs). A big part of the programme, the I See the Difference campaign, has been developed to include lots of helpful information about AHPs on the website, currently alongside social media channels such as @icthedifference Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. The digital campaign is also backed up by a large amount of outreach activities at schools and careers events across England.

More programme updates include:

  • The Challenge Fund – In year one, six higher education projects were funded which focus on supporting the recruitment and retention of existing and new students of podiatry and therapeutic radiography. Find out more about the providers and projects here. As we begin year two, we have launched a second challenge fund with a wider remit and a budget of £400,000. Successful bid winners will be announced in the coming months.
  • The British and Irish Orthoptic Society (BIOS) are working on a project to facilitate work shadowing opportunities in orthoptics.
  • A funded fixed-term role to increase capacity for prosthetics and orthotics work placements, allowing more students to study the subject.
  • Two research projects. The first report looked into the barriers to mature student engagementin healthcare, and how to address them. See report here
  • We are currently working with another research company who are completing a study of male participation in nursing and allied health (NMAH). The report will seek to understand current differences in male participation to different NMAH disciplines to help understand and overcome barriers.

Some of our achievements in Year One of the campaign and programme include:

  • More than 11,000 people visited the campaign website, 90% were new users. This equated to 19,637 page views
  • A direct email campaign to 2500 secondary schools was undertaken, with 772 emails opened, equated to an open rate of 30.9%
  • Attending more than 100 events including presentations to schools and smaller career fairs. Reaching 1700 students, families, teachers and careers advisors at large scale events and receiving 236 requests for school outreach at these events.

Also, visit the I See The Difference website for more information about the campaign.

Get in touch with the team, info@iseethedifference.co.uk, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook

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Anti-Bullying

BAPO is proud to be a part of a new anti-bullying alliance, supporting and sharing ideas and promoting resources and support systems

Bulling has no place in healthcare or the NHS, and it negatively effects staff, services and patients. BAPO are strongly committed to supporting our P&O professionals alongside the wider healthcare environment to erradicate bullying

For more information and resources see the Anti-Bulling document below

AntiBullying AllianceDownload

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A Digital Framework for Allied Health Professionals

“This year we have seen the NHS long term plan explicitly identify that digitally enabled care will go mainstream across the NHS to improve population health and support healthcare professionals. This is supported by the recently published Topol review recommendations, asking NHS staff to make the most of innovative technologies such as genomics, digital medicine, artificial intelligence and robotics to improve services. As allied health professions (AHPs) we have an individual and collective responsibility to play a role in the development of these digital and data capabilities, anticipating the challenges and realising the benefits.

Enabling AHPs to use information and technology is therefore one of 4 priorities in AHPs into Action. A Digital Framework for Allied Health Professionals – Key foundations for future clinical practice supports local services and AHPs to make that happen and works towards services that are both paper-free at the point of care and connected to other services and systems.

I would encourage you to share, discuss and use this framework with your members and networks. Together we can ensure we deliver digital and data enabled AHP services for the benefit of citizens and the wider health and care system.”

Kind regards,
Suzanne Rastrick
Chief Allied Health Professions Officer
NHS England

A Digital Framework for Allied Health ProfessionalsDownload

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BAPO Strategy Event

Unfortunately this event has had to be cancelled .
Many thanks to all those who were interested in taking part.

Our profession exists in a constantly changing environment. With improvements in technology, surgery and changing health profile for our populations, rehabilitation has been revolutionised over the last 20 years and will continue to adopt new procedures and components to maximise the outcomes for our service users. BAPO has created a strategy document for our association but we should also be looking forward to the future for the profession.

What’s on the horizon in the UK and the NHS?
Do our clinicians of the future need to have different skills?
Does our training need to change to anticipate this in our undergraduate programmes and post graduate CPD?

BAPO is creating a long term strategy for the next ten years for P&O to direct work and projects to ensure our profession is ready for the future, and we need your help.
To facilitate this, we are holding an event for all members to consider how we best structure our activities in the coming years. The event will include presentations from those involved in setting strategy in health economics, rehabilitation services, technology and healthcare generally. Following the presentations, you will be invited to contribute to group discussions to consider how these may impact on our own strategy. The day will conclude with bringing together the results of those discussions to help create a draft document of what our strategy may be.

We see this as an important event in giving you, the membership, an opportunity to help steer the future of our profession.

We look forward to meeting you on the day and very much hope as many as possible will attend the event.

Please fill in the below for or contact the Secretariat to confirm you attendance

BAPO Strategy FlyerDownload

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Early Day Motion on AHPs & Leadesrhip

MPs call for greater skills diversity in the NHS

A cross-party group of MPs today tabled an Early Day Motion in Parliament urging the government to consider a law change, to allow for greater diversity of leadership at the top of the NHS.

Proposer of the motion Norman Lamb MP (Lib Dem) said; “Not many people will be aware that in many hospitals up and down the land today, skilled professionals who are not doctors or nurses, known as Allied Health Professionals (AHPs), are effectively banned from being Executive Clinical Directors on Trust Boards. If we want more creative thinking, and the voices of physios, OTs, radiographers and many other therapists to be heard in NHS boardrooms, then we need a law change. The current rules are holding us back.”

Parmjit Dhanda, Chair of the Allied Health Professionals Federation (AHPF) said: “We’re delighted that MPs have laid this motion before the House today and recognised the importance of AHPs in senior NHS roles.  It is a reminder that our health service values all of its workforce. Doctors and nurses are crucial, but diversity of skills delivers better services. This motion reminds us all of the benefits that could be gained if a wider group of skilled professionals were allowed to take up Medical and/or Nursing Director roles on Foundation Trusts. But it does require the lifting of a legal restriction by the government.”

 

The EDM states:

 “That this House shares the view of the Allied Health Professions Federation (AHPF) that greater diversity of talent in leadership posts in hospitals can boost multi-disciplinary working, reduce pressure on emergency departments and hence improve outcomes for patients; agrees with the AHPF that the rules governing NHS Foundation Trust hospitals which limit Medical Director roles to doctors and Nursing Director roles to nurses, is outdated and excludes over 150,000 Allied Health Professionals from these leadership roles; urges the Government to remove this unnecessary restriction in law, and broaden its diversity of talent in senior roles.”

 

AHPs are the 3rd largest sector in the NHS. There are 158,000 AHPs working within a range of surroundings including hospitals, people’s homes, clinics, surgeries, the justice system, local authorities, private and voluntary sectors and primary, secondary and tertiary education. The Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Act 2003 that established Foundation Trusts specified that Boards had to have a Medical and Nursing Directors with medical or nursing qualifications. While there may be some AHPs who are also Board Directors, historically these are often subsidiary to nursing directors, so AHPs don’t fill the most senior posts.

‘It is an established fact that throughout all sectors and industries, the most successful Boards are those with the greatest diversity. The NHS needs to do everything it can to ensure Boards access the widest talent possible and limiting the executive clinical roles to only two professions is out-dated and exclusive when we should be looking to simply recruit the very best clinicians to these senior positions.’

BAPO are pleased to support this EDM and to see it tabled in Parliament today