Bury’s community paediatric physiotherapy team gained green status for their first-ever Community Assessment and Accreditation System (CAAS) standards recently, the highest in the accreditation organisation's red, amber and green traffic-light rating system.
CAAS takes into account a range of parameters that prioritise patients, with physio team embedding its values into their own team culture. Their efforts have improved the lives of children and young people through their dedication to providing high-quality, safe and effective patient care.
The paediatric physio team has spent the past 12 months developing its staff as leaders and invested time into developing their skills in quality improvement and demonstrating our focus on service development.
With a passion for improving the patient experience, the group has developed ways of getting feedback from children and young people with complex needs to ensure their voices are heard.
“Developed in conjunction with the speech and language service – we’ve implemented a star-of-the-month award with the child or young person receiving a certificate and with consent, their picture displayed on our department wall,” said paediatric physiotherapy team leader Lyndsey Davenport. “We want to be able to recognise and celebrate the achievements of our service users.”
Promoting equality, the team has equality meetings every three months to identify where they can break down barriers. Lyndsey said: “We’ve had two of our patient letters translated into the top three most-commonly-used languages to improve access to our service right at the start of a patient’s journey.
“We’ve also recruited for a new assistant role, then invited a service user with complex physical difficulties to join the panel and write some interview questions, which was hugely valuable. This ensured we recruited the best candidate for the role using our service users lived experience.”
Attending to safety and managing risk, the team developed a competency framework for treatment programmes that are delegated to education staff, to ensure safe and effective interventions.
Ensuring the wellbeing of staff member is also important – the team has a wellbeing champion and holds regular wellbeing events such as quizzes, yoga sessions alongside informal conversations.
Team member Laura with input from colleagues, on what the CAAS achievement means to them, said: I’m proud to be part of such an amazing team. It is so important to us that we provide the best care, that is effective and personalised to meet the needs of our children and young people.
“It’s fantastic that our excellent patient care has been recognised. Our team leaders are supportive of the staff and promote an environment of learning and service development.”
Final words come from Lyndsey and clinical lead Alice McEvoy, who say: “We're extremely proud of the team and their engagement in the process, and the result of our first assessment. CAAS values are embedded within the team culture and improving the lives of our children and young people, which is why we come to work.”