What’s it Like Being an Innovator?
Some people wonder what all this fuss about being an ‘innovator’ is and whether it really makes any difference for staff.
As part of our work with Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council, three of the innovators from a Neighbourhood Team spoke to Jonathan from Partners4Change about using the Three Conversations approach. These conversations took place at the end of November following the innovation phase of 13 weeks. What follows is an extract of the discussions, edited for clarity and length.
Jonathan: Tell us about your role and what you do in your local authority…
Geraldine: My name’s Geraldine and I work for Tameside Borough Council. I’ve been here for two years and I’m an assessor with the East Neighbourhood team.
Louise: My name’s Louise and I’m a Community Care Officer for Tameside Council. I across the localities and I’m supporting people with a range of different issues within the community.
Deborah: I’m Deborah and I’ve been working for Tameside Council for 20 plus years now. I go out and assess people in their own homes and in care homes.
J: Two of you said your job title is ‘assessor’, which of course is a banned word in Three Conversations!
D: Previously, we would just go in and do the ‘Care Act assessment’, refer on to other services and would never find out what the outcome was. But with the 3Cs we ‘stick like glue’, having constant conversations with the family, services, the person…
G: We would do an assessment and we would ask the service user our questions. In the Three Conversations you’re working in a relationship-based way, you’re listening hard to what really matters to the service user, you’re bringing more humanity and curiosity and kindness to your work. You’re recording work proportionately and you’re asking the people whose lives it actually applies to “what would you like for your care going forward?”. You’re giving them the choices as opposed to telling them what we are going to give them.
D: This Three Conversations pilot was working in a totally different way than I’m used to – going out, meeting clients and spending that time with them, getting to know them, getting to know things that maybe they’ve never discussed before, building a really strong relationship with them, family members and the services that were provided for them. At this moment in time, there’s nothing that I don’t like about it. I’ve really enjoyed doing it and I do want to carry on doing it because I think it’s just more social work-based instead of focussing on the eligibility criteria when going out and assessing somebody. We can now see an end of what we’ve done for a person, which is so, so much better than it was previously.
L: When we were introduced to the concept of three Cs I felt how refreshing it was to actually concentrate on having conversations with our service users – the people of Tameside. And almost a little bit like going back to how it used to be working in social care when we would get out into the community and have those conversations. More proactive rather than reactive.
J: How has it affected your team, working in this way?
L: I’m new to the team. I only started in March. And I didn’t know people very well and I felt the Three Conversations model brought the team together with more unity. I got to know the team a lot better, probably better than I would have done if we weren’t doing the Three Conversations because we all came together. I really enjoyed having those conversations and then being able to come back to my team and have discussions around those conversations and solving problems more as a team rather than as an individual.
G: I would say honestly it took until about week 7 to actually get our heads around what was being asked of us for the 3 Cs. But then it just seemed to click with us. I think deep down the reason why the 3Cs did work was we are quite a big team, probably 15 plus staff and we were all on board for it. We were all up for learning something new and each week as we came across a problem, we talked through it.
D: When the team started the Three Conversations we were all excited about it because there was something new. We have become a lot closer as a team, we discuss more, we share information more. We look more closely at the community, what’s available and the team now is working so well together with all the experience that we all have. We are sharing our views and experiences with the 3Cs and yes it’s been working really well, although it’s a very busy team.
J: What do you think it’s been like for the people of Tameside, how do you think they’ve been experiencing this?
L: The feedback I’ve been getting is they like dealing with the same person. So you’re building that relationship and trust and they’re able to have the confidence to talk to you about things. And they like the fact that they don’t have to relay their story over and over again to different people, they’ve got that one port of call they can go to.
G: Previously we would have signposted people (to support) but now we’ve done it or we’ve asked the person to do it and we’ve gone back to them and said “how did you get on? Oh, that’s been sorted”. Now one phone call did it, one e-mail did it. And I think spending more time with them and listening to them, connecting with different services – GPs, community – it’s just a quicker process and the person seems to go away happier.
L: You can work better with them now, almost giving them the empowerment to resolve any of the problems that they may have. It’s not only empowered me but also the service users are following suit. They’re saying “oh, I found this in my local area”, so I think it’s definitely building a better rapport and a better relationship. People like to know a name, don’t they? And I think that’s the biggest change I’ve seen in people in the office as well, that they’re giving their name out to people.
J: Is there any advice that you would give to other staff or teams that are thinking about using this approach?
D: Our manager says that “Debbie never does change”. But I would highly recommend it. It is stressful to begin with, you have bumps in the road then you work them out. There’s always ups and downs to it but I think it it’s the best way of working for me and I’ve got social services experience for 33 years. The experience you get from colleagues is so invaluable because we all think differently. We can all bring different ideas to the table. So if you were offered the chance to do this, I would definitely do it.
G: Yes, it is scary at the beginning because we’re very set in our ways, we don’t like change. If you’ve got a team behind you and everybody’s involved, you’re getting other teams involved, you can actually iron out the bumps in the road.
L: Like with Health, with the OTs, we’ve definitely had a better working relationship with them. We’ve got a phone number. We can just ring them and we’re getting a quicker, faster response. The partnerships that we’ve built up whilst working with Three Conversations have definitely strengthened and we can only continue to build on that and to build on the knowledge of what the Community offer is – our strong community of Tameside and how it can support people to live a healthy life.
If you think you might like to give this a go, get in touch with Sam Newman (sam@partners4change.co.uk) who will talk you through what’s involved.
We’d love to hear from you.