Adobe Stock Bringing stakeholders together to plan the next steps for social care data
In this blog, Jeni Meyrick, our Information Governance Lead, reflects on a recent workshop where we brought stakeholders together to discuss the next steps for social care data in Wales.
We recently brought together a group of key stakeholders for a workshop to try and create a roadmap for the next phase of the National Data Resource (NDR) programme and social care data strategy for Wales.
With the recommendations of the National report on social care data maturity in Wales as our starting point, we discussed some of the things we’d like to work towards. We then used these desired outcomes to start plotting our next steps towards achieving them.
The workshop was hugely productive, and we received lots of positive feedback from those involved.
"I can’t remember when I last walked away from a full-day workshop with such buoyancy. It exceeded all my expectations and gave us so many suggestions to work with." - Jeni Meyrick
Why did we bring stakeholders together?
One of the reasons we arranged the workshop was to make the case for prioritising investment in specific solutions to problems that are preventing us from realising our ambition for health and social care data.
This includes getting data into (and ultimately out of) the NDR – a national data platform that will join up health and social care data services from across Wales, making it easier to access and analyse in a safe, secure and ethical way.
We worked with the NDR team to put the workshop together, with the intention of feeding into the next phase of the programme.
How did the workshop work?
We invited stakeholders who have a broad view of the health and social care data landscape in Wales to highlight related work and help us set our priorities.
We wanted to maximise the value of having everyone in the same room and avoid a scenario where people walked away feeling like not much had been achieved.
That’s why we used the London Office of Technology and Innovation’s (LOTI) outcomes-based methodology, which focuses on how data leads to action and starts with real-world outcomes in mind.
The approach was well received by stakeholders, and you can find out more about the methodology and find some useful resources on LOTI’s website.
We simplified the data maturity report’s recommendations into five themes and asked the stakeholders to join a themed table.
The table facilitator then took the group through three stages:
- Identifying the real-world outcomes we want to achieve. Which specific people would be better off in which specific ways because we acted? In this case it could have been a director of social services having real-time data to plan social care delivery, or a frontline worker having access to all the data on the individual they were supporting.
- Discovering and defining the barriers preventing us from achieving those outcomes. For example, data being shared on excel and pdf documents instead of systems that work together, or care workers not having time to record the data because they’re there to deliver care, not write reports.
- Exploring solutions to those barriers we can develop and deliver.
Crucially, suggestions in steps two and three are split into two categories – ‘technology and data' or ‘people and processes’. As much as we tend to focus on technology and data issues and solutions, this approach highlights how much is down to people and processes in practice.
What did the workshop achieve?
I can’t remember when I last walked away from a full-day workshop with such buoyancy. It exceeded all my expectations and gave us so many suggestions to work with.
Conversation on every table flowed naturally throughout the day. Some themes fared better in terms of interest, but most people visited all of the tables, and the facilitators did a great job in noting outcomes, defining the problems that stop us from achieving these and turning these problems into solutions.
Having a mix of perspectives on every table was invaluable. Heads of adult services were able to dispel myths about where the challenges in provision were, commissioners advocated for smaller providers who had totally different models of social care delivery to a large local authority, information governance and data science experts explained their challenges in enabling slicker data sharing, and Welsh Government representatives described what evidence they needed to measure impact.
It was fantastic to see everyone sharing their ideas.
What happens next?
There were several consistent messages from the day:
- We need to agree some minimum operational data standards for social care and find a way to get them used consistently.
- The NDR programme is relatively unknown outside of health – we need to be clear on the ‘offer’ to social care and invest in promoting it.
- No one has huge resources or headspace, so talking about and sharing innovative ways of collecting and sharing data is as valuable as investment in technology.
- Getting social care representation on some key programme boards would be a great opportunity.
- FHIR is a great enabler to sharing data, but people need to know more about it.
- There’s training on data already available for leaders and frontline workers, but they need to be aware of it and have time to access it.
- Measuring the impact of social care using data is different to health, but there are positive stories to tell with social care data if we ask the right questions of the data we collect.
- Frontline staff aren’t there to collect stats, but if we make systems and processes more straightforward, collecting data will become second nature.
Our immediate next step is to take what we’ve learned, map it against the recommendations of the data maturity report and develop a roadmap for our work.
We’ll also revisit our social care data strategy to make sure that those aspects outside of NDR are also considered.
Find out more
If you'd like to know more about our data work, please contact data@socialcare.wales.