Gill Phillips and Florence Wilcock, co-founders of the powerful #fMatExp social movement, talk about the coproduction work they have done together since 2014. To make this manageable in 30 minutes, they choose a small but hugely important area of their #MatNeoQI work, which has so much potential to improve the lives of new families when their baby needs neonatal care.
We talk here about women and families who all too often fall between maternity and neonatal services, one of the 3 themes of the 'Nobody's patient' project, for which powerful Whose Shoes scenarios and poems were produced to spark crucial conversations for change. These resources have been used incredibly effectively, notably in Liverpool, thanks in particular to mum-leader Helen Calvert and consultant paediatrician, Joanne Minford.
In the light of the BAPM framework for Family Integrated Care #FICare (Dec 2021), we encourage the 80 NHS trusts that already have these resources to get full value from them, supporting healthcare professionals to make parents the primary carers, caring for their babies in NICU and preparing to go home as a family. We are excited to build on this work further in 2022.
With thanks to the NHS England Experience of Care team for inviting us to share our #MatExp 'Whose Shoes' co-production work at 'Shine A Light on coproduction', Jan 2022. This podcast picks out some highlights from our session.
Lemon light bulbs 🍋💡🍋
See this podcast as a video. Recording of full session (90 mins) can be seen on the NHS Futures website
Dr. Alice Ladur - Whose Shoes in Uganda
Learning from Covid-19 – our report from our 6-part Virtual Whose Shoes series
The Hospital Infant Feeding Network (HIFN)
We LOVE it when you leave a review!
If you enjoy my podcast and find these conversations useful
please share your thoughts by leaving a review (Apple is easiest to leave a review) and comment on your favourite episodes.
I tweet as @WhoseShoes and @WildCardWS and am on Instagram as @WildCardWS.
Please recommend 'Wild Card - Whose Shoes' to others who enjoy hearing passionate people talk about their experiences of improving health care.
Gill Phillips and Florence Wilcock, co-founders of the powerful #fMatExp social movement, talk about the coproduction work they have done together since 2014. To make this manageable in 30 minutes, they choose a small but hugely important area of their #MatNeoQI work, which has so much potential to improve the lives of new families when their baby needs neonatal care.
We talk here about women and families who all too often fall between maternity and neonatal services, one of the 3 themes of the 'Nobody's patient' project, for which powerful Whose Shoes scenarios and poems were produced to spark crucial conversations for change. These resources have been used incredibly effectively, notably in Liverpool, thanks in particular to mum-leader Helen Calvert and consultant paediatrician, Joanne Minford.
In the light of the BAPM framework for Family Integrated Care #FICare (Dec 2021), we encourage the 80 NHS trusts that already have these resources to get full value from them, supporting healthcare professionals to make parents the primary carers, caring for their babies in NICU and preparing to go home as a family. We are excited to build on this work further in 2022.
With thanks to the NHS England Experience of Care team for inviting us to share our #MatExp 'Whose Shoes' co-production work at 'Shine A Light on coproduction', Jan 2022. This podcast picks out some highlights from our session.
Lemon light bulbs 🍋💡🍋
See this podcast as a video. Recording of full session (90 mins) can be seen on the NHS Futures website
Dr. Alice Ladur - Whose Shoes in Uganda
Learning from Covid-19 – our report from our 6-part Virtual Whose Shoes series
The Hospital Infant Feeding Network (HIFN)
We LOVE it when you leave a review!
If you enjoy my podcast and find these conversations useful
please share your thoughts by leaving a review (Apple is easiest to leave a review) and comment on your favourite episodes.
I tweet as @WhoseShoes and @WildCardWS and am on Instagram as @WildCardWS.
Please recommend 'Wild Card - Whose Shoes' to others who enjoy hearing passionate people talk about their experiences of improving health care.
0:11
My name is Gill Phillips, and I'm the creator of Whose Shoes, a popular approach to co-production. I was named as an HSJ 100 Wild Card, and want to help give a voice to others talking about their ideas and experiences. I'll be chatting with people from all sorts of different perspectives, walking in their shoes. If you are interested in the future of health care, and like to hear what other people think, or perhaps even contribute at some point, Whose Shoes Wild Card is for you.
Gill Phillips 0:45
The last couple of weeks have been busy and exciting. We've had some interesting invitations to work with NHS England, and showcase some of our Whose Shoes work and the impact it's having. It's been rewarding to find so many people who really care about co-production, and finding out what matters to people using health services. First, we did a 'Shine a light on co-production' session as part of a bi-monthly series organised by NHS England Experience of Care team. In terms of how best to use the opportunity, I really struggled with this one. I agreed to it three months in advance. But our work is a social movement rather than a project. So there's always something new happening. How could we know three months in advance what we want to talk about? Anyway, in the end, we delivered my ambition to make it super topical. And the Wild Card Whose Shoes podcast really helped with that. I'm just beginning to realize what a powerful resource it is in terms of being able to drop in, obviously, with permission, clips from people talking, and so on. Hang on in there. And I'll share some of the highlights in today's episode.
Gill Phillips 1:57
The second invitation was a lot more JFDI. And my ideas came together very quickly, as the topic was not so vast. And I didn't feel such a huge sense of responsibility in terms of doing justice to many years of work with input from so many amazing people. So what was this second opportunity? James Mountford, Director of National improvement strategy at NHS England, runs some lovely huddle sessions, bringing together a really caring and thoughtful group of mainly NHS people, and asked someone to be a theme leader for a discussion around a thought-provoking topic. So this month, it was me. My topic was "What does it mean to walk in someone's shoes? What are the benefits for healthcare professionals?" I loved it, and quickly noted some ideas down on my phone. Creativity is very subjective, isn't it?
Gill Phillips 2:55
And then a third invitation. A couple of days ago, I agreed to do a session for the NHS Graduate Management Trainee Scheme, looking back and reviewing the learning over the pandemic, and how we can all build the future together. Well, I absolutely love working with people at the start of their careers, and also getting involved in anything around clinical education because the work I've done with the Darzi fellows for many years now has been really exciting. So that was great. And then amongst all this, do you remember that podcast I had a few weeks ago with Dr. Terri Porrett, who runs fab NHS stuff with Roy Lilley? Well, live on the podcast, Terri and I came up with the lemon lightbulb idea of setting up a Fab NHS Stuff campaign page for #MatExp and Whose Shoes. Here's what she said:
Terri Porrett 3:48
Absolutely Gill, and I can make you a campaign page. All of this can go in one central place. So all we need to do when we want to refer people to this - one page, one campaign page and they will find everything with this hashtag on that one page can even sort it. It's so simple to do.
Gill Phillips 4:07
Well. Terri followed through on that pledge with amazing ... everything really - spontaneity, speed, big JFDI. And she has set us up with a Whose Shoes #MatExp campaign page. And every day they're adding and tweeting different examples of our work over the last few years. Check it out FAB NHS stuff. We're loving it, it's just brilliant. So it's been an energising and slightly exhausting start to 2022. So coming back to our shine a light on co-production session. What to do? I chatted it through with my magic mate Florence Wilcock, consultant obstetrician at Kingston hospital and my co-founder of #MatExp. Flo agreed to lead the session with me, which was brilliant, focusing on our #MatExp work (so that's maternity experience) and choosing just one element of the powerful co-production work that's been done by our wonderful JFDI #MatExp community pretty much every day since that fateful phone call back in 2014. These are just some highlights from our session. You can watch the whole presentation. I've just published it on my YouTube channel. And we'll provide a link in the program notes. But I've got to go the phone's ringing. I wonder who that is ...
Florence Wilcock 5:34
Hello, hello, my name is Florence. I'm an obstetrician at Kingston hospital. And I've been seeing all sorts of dementia workshops in Kent on Twitter. And I'm part of the London Clinical Network, looking at maternity experience, do you think Whose Shoes would work in maternity care?
Gill Phillips 5:57
Oh, that's a really interesting question. Kath Evans asked me that a while ago. And the rest, as they say is history. So how do we tell you about the work that we've been doing since June 2014? I think to start with giving you a taste of one of our workshops so this is a #MatExp workshop working with the fabulous maternity team in Brighton.
Gill Phillips 6:42
Yeah, I think you're gonna have to watch the YouTube video for this bit. Honestly, we had the most amazing session, Brighton and Hove Football Club. We had an absolutely fantastic team to work with everybody there, midwives, obstetricians, local charities mums and babies. A Baroness you name it, we just had the most amazing session and Flo took part in this dance after lunch and we had fantastic pledges, the kind of things we can follow up now with Fab NHS stuff. And it was on International Women's Day.
Voice of mum from the video: Positive change can be made.
Gill Phillips 7:22
That is co-production to us. So this approach has now got over 80 NHS Trusts using the Whose Shoes approach in maternity care. And we do work around lots of different topics as well, as you heard from Flo, the big work that we did around dementia care back in 2013-14, and since, was the driver to actually bring this approach into maternity services. And now we do virtual sessions as well. Although we do really prefer being in the room with judging the cake. It's more fun. For the session today, seven and a half years of co-production in 20 minutes. You ready, Flo?
Florence Wilcock 8:02
Yes, I am.
Gill Phillips 8:03
So it's got to be our biggest platform. Yeah, I'm not quite sure how it happened. It would need a whole different session to tell you about #MatExp the Musical on the main stage of NHS Expo, and our lovely baroness part of that. And all the different perspectives, which is such an important part of Whose Shoes, a tiny taster here.
Gill Phillips 8:50
A safe birth experience of your choice. That's pretty much what needs to happen in maternity care. So creativity, lemons and social media. Why do I call you one blog Flo, Flo?
Florence Wilcock 9:05
Because you asked me to write a blog, and I wasn't sure about it. And I was writing it. And my husband said, What are you doing? You're spending time doing this? You haven't got time, and I went," Okay, I'm just gonna do this one blog for Gill". And I did it and I never looked back. So I feel like working with Gill, has unleashed a bit of a creative side of me that I didn't really have the opportunity to think about in my kind of day to day, being an obstetrician. And this is more from writing a blog for Gill to writing a blog, or blogs for the BMJ, to stories. And now I have a podcast. So yeah, it's it's kind of grown from that one challenge to write one blog.
Gill Phillips 9:58
And your podcast is now ... how many episodes is it?
Florence Wilcock 10:03
I'm just recording episode 88 This week, yeah, 88.
Gill Phillips 10:07
And the other resource for people to dip into - all aspects of maternity care aimed at people who ... what I love Flo, is when you say sometimes, "you might think this is a bit odd". And it's just at the moment, I'm thinking "things were a bit odd". So good, you bring it alive for people. And that's what it's all about.
Florence Wilcock 10:26
Thank you.
Gill Phillips 10:27
So a big shout out from me for the ObsPod. And we went on to talk about pledges. And to show some examples. Some of this stuff obviously works better in the live presentation with pictures and slides, and so on. And so dip in and take a look at the video. So the challenge was, with all these rich examples of best practice, how to do justice in about 20 minutes, we decided to focus down on the middle of our three big maternity projects, nobody's patient, because that's about women and families who fall through gaps in services. And within that, we decided to focus on just one of the groups. It's like a sub theme of one of our projects. But it's just got so much energy at the moment. And this is the story we're trying to get across. This is not a project. It's a social movement, and the energy keeps going on and on. So I've been a nightmare with this presentation, trying to bring in things that are really topical. Now, because that gives you a flavor of just how something's always happening. So families with newborn babies in neonatal units. So Flo tell us a bit more about 'Nobody's patient'.
Florence Wilcock 11:36
So there was a challenge fund, and there was some money for doing a project in maternity experience. And we decided because they'd called it the MatExp Challenge Fund, which was really our hashtag, that we had better bid for it. And overnight, I didn't really have many thoughts. And then I woke up in the middle of the night, which is sometimes what happens with an idea. And it was based on one of our parent leaders, Leigh Kendall, who'd had a very premature baby, she had a life threatening illness herself. And her baby boy Hugo was in neonatal care when she was in intensive care. And I knew her story. And it suddenly made me think this is the opportunity to close those gaps, the gap between maternity services and neonatal services. So one is a paediatric department, the other is maternity department. Can we try and close those gaps? And while we were putting together the bids, which involved several parents, the London Clinical Network, my hospital, my local tertiary centre, St. George's, as well as Gill and Anna, who does our lovely graphics. Well, while doing that someone tweeted that they felt like nobody's patients, because they felt they were stuck between maternity and neonatal, they didn't belong to anyone. They were nobody's patient. And that's how we came up with the name.
Gill Phillips 13:06
We could invite loads of people to join us. We're all equals together. Today we happen to be hearing from Helen Calvert who again, like Leigh Kendall, was one of our amazing mum leaders, parent leaders within this work and not just being involved there. I use tye wild horses emoji every time I talk about Helen and the work that she did, so let's hear directly from Helen.
Helen Calvert 13:30
Theoretical mommy. Six days old, so fragile, so new. He'd been in intensive care. Now moved to HDU I wasn't too sure what I was meant to do. Still wired up, a drain in his tummy. I felt like a kind of theoretical mummy. Okay, come on, Mum. You change his nappy. The voice was abrupt, verging on snappy. You're going to have to learn how to do this, you know. At best, robustly encouraging. She was clearly the boss, years of experience under her belt. Or she didn't give a toss. Not a clue how I felt. I felt she wanted to kick my backside. I felt sick. I just wanted to hide. I turned around and walked off the ward. Did nobody see I was anxious or frightened? I started to feel guilty for behaving so badly. And no one suggested I shouldn't feel that way.
Helen Calvert 14:42
Hi, everyone. I'm Helen Calvert. And thank you so much to Gill Phillips for asking me to talk to you all about co-production today. My journey with Gill, co-production, Whose Shoes, maternity, all kinds of different campaigns and all kinds of experiences started when my youngest son was born with a congenital heart defect. He has hypoplastic left heart syndrome. And he's had three major surgeries and one minor, he's now seven years old, doing very well. And whilst I was in hospital with him in a paediatric hospital with him when he was about five months old, I really saw the lack of qualified breastfeeding support on paediatric wards and in paediatric hospitals. It was very noticeable. And I already had quite a substantial network of mums, because I was running a Facebook group for mums at the time. And it became apparent this was quite a widespread issue. So I took to Twitter, which I had never really used before, to find people in the breastfeeding world and in the paediatric world who were interested in this as an issue to discuss. And I met some amazing people, fantastic people working in all areas of infant feeding, lactation, paediatrics, put together a great network quite quickly, actually, there was a lot of enthusiasm. And that led to the hospital breastfeeding campaign, which I ran for a few years. And I had the privilege of handing that baton to the Hospital Infant Feeding Network, which has been set up by doctors Victoria Thomas, and Ilana Levine, if you're not aware of their work, do look up hifn.org. And they have a group on Facebook. So they are now leading the charge when it comes to infant feeding support on paediatrics. And that would not have happened if it wasn't for the conversations that I started having, and that people started having with each other through these networks. So that is just incredible to me, because I'm still in the Facebook group. I'm not involved in the campaigning any more, but I can see not just the progress that's being made. But the conversations that are happening, the people who are talking to each other from different hospitals, from different areas, from different professions, lactation consultants, private practice coming together with NHS. And it's just so wonderful to see the right people having these conversations together. So that's really exciting. Part of being on Twitter meant that I met Gill, and Flo who run the #MatExp campaign, maternity experience campaign, and I got heavily involved in that as well. And that's how I came across Gill's incredible Whose Shoes methodology, which I am just such a fan of, because it's all about bringing the right people together to have these conversations. And I think we all know that getting people in a room, getting the right voices together, hearing from a diverse group of people is important. But what Gil does, is there are no token voices in Whose Shoes. So if you are a group of parents, then the healthcare professional is not the token voice. If you're a group of doctors, the patient or the patient-parent is not the token voice. You're all equal. You all have valid things to say. And there's no hierarchy. It's just people all talking together with equal input. And it's the questions that are asked that really get you and really make you think differently about issues that you might have had strong views on for such a long time. So I really enjoyed that methodology and seeing how Gill worked and seeing how she just uses energy, goes where the energy is and just brings people together to have these vital conversations. And it was such a privilege to be able to connect her with Joanne Minford at Alder Hey Children's Hospital, which is where my son is looked after, and Whose Shoes came to Alder Hey, which was just incredible. And I was able to attend a day with the Whose Shoes game being played by board members, parents, nurses, janitorial staff, to everybody just exactly who you want just everybody in the room and having these really important discussions. And that was such a joy to see. And it's not that the parent voice isn't listened to in the NHS, it really is. But it's often on quite a tokenistic basis. And also, it's often quite piecemeal. But when we have these amazing networks and collaborations using things like Twitter and Facebook, it's not piecemeal, you can start to build a web and you can see the overlapping diagrams of who knows who and who's involved with who? And who should be talking to who? So we're not reinventing the wheel, we already know, Oh, yes. so and so's done that in another hospital that we put you in touch with them, which is just so powerful.
Gill Phillips 20:13
So I think if you thought that was powerful, that was Helen Calvert telling, if you imagine an iceberg, I'd say that the little snippet that she had there, in terms of both her contribution, it's the little tiny tip sticking above the water, she did so much. And also the story on what happened at Alder Hey and using regular Whose Shoes workshops, a series of them, and uniting behind the key messages, not what 'I think' anymore, but what 'we said', using the powerful graphic records, and ultimately leading to a new neonatal unit in Liverpool. That is a huge story. So those resources, Theoretical Mummy, one of the many poems, we've always used poems in Whose Shoes and as Helen said, crowdsourced scenarios, provocative, really trying to reach the parts that other tools perhaps don't reach in terms of the real issues that people need to talk about. And that's where, in a way, it got really exciting because we were able to build on the work that was originally done in Nobody's P atient and bring it bang up to date talking about Family Integrated Care, talking about the scenario that we wrote, for Whose Shoes all those years ago, when Family Integrated Care just seemed to be an innovative idyllic practice in Canada, whereby the parents of children in the neonatal ward are actually the primary carers. Our scenario included the words, "if parents are not fully involved in the care of their baby, what hope is there that they can explain things to their GP, health visitor, or other professionals when they finally go home". And again, a poem shared at the Shine a Light session, illustrating that when things don't join up, parents can feel that they are nobody's patient. Falling off the Pathway was a poem that you particularly love, I think Flo? Would you like to read that one for us?
Florence Wilcock 22:14
Absolutely. It's Falling off the Pathway. I was on the postnatal ward, my baby was in NNU. All too often, I simply hadn't a clue what I was I meant to do. You had to be in postnatal to order your food, about an hour before the meal, and then be there to actually eat it. It all became such a big deal. We mums we tried colluding, I'll stay in NNU. You order for me, I'll order for you. Hoping mums and babies could all get to feed. Needless to say, we didn't succeed. I kept missing meals spending time with my son. There simply wasn't time to get everything done. Sore from my caesarean, , I shuffle along, a fairly short corridor, unbelievably long, security requirements and hygiene demands, stopping at each door to wash my hands. I was literally going back and forth all day. Please, let's build a joined up pathway.
Gill Phillips 23:31
Thanks, Flo. And how ironic that that poem four years ago used the word 'pathway' . As Cristina and many people on the session will know, that's not my favorite word. So let's not go there.
Florence Wilcock 23:44
And I'm thinking that it's got security requirements - the door which we're going to come on and talk about in a moment,
Gill Phillips 23:53
As at yesterday. And that's got really exciting in terms of the coming of age, if you like of the podcast, in that we're now able to bring in clips directly from the podcast into our presentations. And so to bring the voices of Nadia and Rachel from last week in front of 150 people, in fact it was slightly more than that, wanting to learn about co-production at an NHS England shine a light session. So have you got any examples? I mean, just something simple that we could perhaps include as a clip, as what is co-production with parents.
Rachel Collum 24:31
We've got some really great work happening at the minute in our Parent Advisory Group in the Northeast. I think that's pretty much what the group is about, really. So we're very lucky that the care coordinators who we work with, absolutely want to know what parents not just think but what ideas they have and what they would like to see happening on the units. So they will often bring us a problem or an issue that they've seen parents struggling with who are currently on the unit and then they've basically asked us to run with it. So we'll have brainstorming sessions of things that we experienced. And that's nice as well, because there's so many different perspectives on the parent group. So you've got some people whose babies have left the unit very recently, others who were there during COVID, you've got some whose babies came home perfectly healthy, others whose babies came home with more complex needs, we've got parents of multiples, think we've got one set of parents whose baby sadly died. So you've got so many different perspectives. And we really work with the care coordinators. And it's not a tick box. And actually, I would say, kind of, we tell them what we would like to see happen, and they really take it on board. So from that we're developing what's been called a parent passport, which is the idea that when you come home, there are certain things you want to feel confident or empowered to do with your baby. There's been a lot of different iterations of these booklets or leaflets for coming home within the past, and they've been quite heavily competency based. So it's almost like a tick box discharge thing. You know, come on feed baby, come on, keep baby warm, Does mum know who to contact if baby's not breathing, this kind of thing. The feedback from the parent group has really been about moving away from that idea of competency, which feels quite judgmental when you're a parent and again, is about almost 'Are you capable of looking after your own child,?' which is not how you want to feel when you're about to come home after a 10 week stay on the NICU. So it's much more about what support is out there. What can we do to help parents while they're on the unit so that when they come home, they can feel more confident. So that's been a really completely co-produced booklet. Similarly to that there's another project I've been involved in, that's been completely parent-led to develop some aids to use on the neonatal unit, again, all about empowering parents and helping them ask medical staff the questions they want to ask and feel more involved with their baby. And that's been completely parent-led, like the ideas came from parents based on focus groups and interviews, the design of the aids was all driven by parents. And it's come through a few different iterations now. And each time it's gone back to parents to get their input before we fed it back into the unit. So what you end up with is a product developed by parents, for parents who really get it and get what that experience is like. And I think the parent advisory groups are just invaluable. And I know there's some brilliant ones across the country, because it means parents have been given a voice and an opportunity to get things out there on the unit like that.
Gill Phillips 27:36
That felt like a brilliant step forward in terms of sharing good practice and helping these people with lived experience and the other fantastic voices on the podcast, be heard in a wider audience. And obviously now in the YouTube video as well. So is this area the next #MatExp? It feels as if it is. The networks that are coming together around this area, people connecting with each other, sharing best practice, it just feels so exciting at the moment. So that was the reason we chose this filter, if you like to go down in terms of the session we're doing today. That's the Shine a light session. I don't want people to get lost here. And Flo was listening to last week's podcast with Nadia and Rachel ... ripples, lemon lightbulbs, direct outcomes . Flo,, what happened?
Florence Wilcock 28:27
So I was listening to the podcast on my way to work yesterday. So I often listen on my drive to work. And even though I've done all this co-production with you for years, as you've said, I love it when I hear something new. And they were talking about the fact that you have to press the buzzer to get into the neonatal unit because there's security. And it's important to protect the babies. And they had to press the buzzer, and therefore they had to wait for someone to let them in. So they're actually locked out from their own baby. And I had never thought about it in that way, ever. And they made a really simple suggestion that you could just have a fingerprint, so that when a baby was born, you record the parents fingerprint, and then the fingerprint could access them into the neonatal unit while their baby's there. And then when the baby's left, you can always remove that fingerprint, can't you? And I just thought, oh my god, I have never thought about the fact that you actually can't get through the door to see your own baby, you're locked out. And so I immediately tweeted Born Too Soon, which is our neonatal charity set up by an amazing woman called Pauline, who I know very well and who did the Nobody's Patient project with us. And I'm hoping that by tagging her in, we might be able to do something quickly about this where I work. But yeah, just a lightbulb for me. Even though you kind of think you're there and you're women-centered, and you've kind of learned everything there is to learn and then you realise, you still haven't. There's, there's always something new always.
Gill Phillips 30:11
And that's why I love working with you- Flo is so kind of honest and open to those conversations and possibilities. That for me is what it's all about. I want to do these podcasts, not just as a way of sharing stuff, but people say they want to listen to lived experience stories, I want them to listen, and I want them to do something about it. So that was yesterday.
Florence Wilcock 30:32
The other bit of the podcast that caught my attention was, I don't know if it was Rachel or Nadia talking about what his Family Integrated Care like for professionals, because one of the key things about our co-production is, it's not just about lived experience, it's not just about listening to the parents, it's about listening to the professionals. Because the professionals may have anxiety about changing things, letting go, allowing (I use that word in inverted commas), parents to do more, and what impact that will have on the safety of the babies or what their working practice is like. So co-production is about listening to all sides, not just one side. So it'd be wrong to think that replacing and bringing in lots of lived experience is the only answer, you've got to listen to everything.
Gill Phillips 31:33
And that obviously is central to Whose Shoes, our scenarios are from all perspectives. And that's the power of it, not just listening to any one group. But people suddenly realizing what it's like to be on the other side of the fence. It's something that comes up over and over again. And then almost a kind of feeling of relief and actually talking together. So an old tweet from Cristina, I found co-production, lived experience, but also listening to the stuff - but it is everyone - is catching fire. And it's exciting. We do have more formal outcomes as well. Depending on obviously the support we get with different things. So from our three big maternity projects, that's the generic maternity project. Nobody's patient, the one we're talking a little bit about today, and #MindNBody which is around perinatal mental health, we've managed to come up with three books of very, very transferable, adaptable case studies. Help us share them, they're not reaching people in the way that perhaps they could do. And sometimes if links are broken in, you've included that in goodness knows how many blogs, we all need to work together and make sure the whole thing joins up. So another very quick example, but one I'm so proud of, and Alice has been a guest on the podcast series already. Dr. Alice Ladur, who we connected with at one of our Whose Shoes workshops, we've translated and adapted and goodness knows what some of the cards into Luganda, the local language they use in Uganda. And Alice has just won the Vice Chancellors award at Bournemouth University for her PhD work using Whose Shoes with men in Uganda. And it's being written up at the moment on the Patient Safety Learning hub. Yes, we have loads and loads of examples. I've just tried to pick out a few highlights. So let's leave the women to finish our session. This is what MatExp is about.
Group of Mums:
Sarah -Jane challenged us to do a RAP,
To tell you about #MatExp and put it on the map
We mums are here to help lend a hand
To tell you how we feel and help you understand
.We do stuff together, we get things done.
Come and join us, #MatExp is fun
Gill Phillips 33:55
So again, that is probably one best to see on the video! And a big rallying call, "come and join us. #MatExp is fun". The FUNdamentals of building social movements. Fun sits right the way through it. We use lemons, what are you going to use? So that was the end of our presentation with NHS England and then we had a bit of fun around love and lemons with Cristina and the Experience of Care team. It's not quite the same if you can't see the enormous basket of lemons that Cristina brought back from Madeira.
Cristina Serrao 34:28
That's absolutely wonderful. And I'm going to butt in here just because I have been away for some people that don't know. And I've wanted to bring them upstairs to show how many my mum got into the suitcase that there is a whole load of lemons I'm going to count by the end, but I think yeah, I've definitely got about 15 lemons, so you've definitely had a massive influence on me. Thank you, Gill
Gill Phillips 34:49
And you Cristina, we love you.
Florence Wilcock 34:53
Those lemons are brilliant.
Gill Phillips 34:55
And I have now just finally passed my lemon stress ball to Mr. Whose Shoes so that he can go away and make what he wants of that. There was then a really good question and answer session, obviously, not just with us but with the other people on the session. I get asked specifically about taking Whose Shoes online - our virtual Whose Shoes sessions, so I'll just share my answer here.
Cristina Serrao 35:20
So that comes back to me. I've been busy looking at all the exciting stuff and trying to keep my excitement in check, which never very good with me. But anyway, guys, the number one question that came very, very early on - how'd you do it virtually? I want to get to you first Gill, - virtually , how did you have to change things?
Gill Phillips 35:39
Well, to be honest, to begin with, I didn't want to. For me, Whose Shoes was so much about a face to face approach and judging the cakes and bunting and hugs and so on. I thought I might actually take a break for a bit at the beginning of the pandemic, but other people had different ideas. So our graphic artists were very, very keen to kind of keep the approach going. And lo and behold, Mr. Whose Shoes came to the party, didn't yo?. So Colin is very good at the geeky techie stuff. And so it's a big challenge. And I think, basically, what was the success was trying to make sure that we substituted something equally good. So to set out and not try and do the same thing online. But to tap into the things that you could only do online. And it became a kind of minute by minute planning the Whose Shoes sessions we did. Colin managed to bring the board game online throwing the dice, bringing the scenarios up. But they weren't random. They couldn't be random. It was kind of like a planned conversation in terms of Well, how about this? And how about that. So we did six sessions, which I think were the biggest learning curve of our lives during the pandemic, where we were having the double aim of testing out the technology. So we did a series of six weekly sessions, with virtual Whose Shoes all around the pandemic. And really challenging topics, I've seen the chat, people who are disproportionately affected. One of our sessions was working with people from black and ethnic minority communities, getting them leading the sessions, doing it online. Honestly, I felt so far outside of my comfort zone. But the feedback was really good. And we did even manage to write it up in a report which is unheard of, for us. Now a little snippet into Whose Shoes - apparently the Scottish Government were interested. I don't know whether they were or not because we never heard from them. But it did mean that we actually used that as the excuse to write a report which wouldn't have happened otherwise. So sometimes we can like find ways around things, but the virtual sessions we've ended up doing around really sensitive topics. So for example, people sadly losing babies in pregnancy or stillbirth and so on. And we had two sessions lined up before the pandemic, which Flo was very, very much part of so Flo, you were live at the event in Colchester, a face to face event just before the pandemic March 2020. And it took us 10 months to do event number two with Gloucestershire, because we were so keen to think through every aspect, and the event in Gloucestershire virtually ended up being extraordinary in that who's in the room who's in this co-production. We had 15 bereaved couples, they could turn their cameras off, if they wanted to, they could be sitting there quietly having a hug behind the scenes, they could be commenting in the chat rather than having to do anything public whatsoever. We had the obvious midwives, obstetricians, families, but we also had the hospital chaplain, we had medical photographers, we had the local GP, we had charities, we had Sands UK. And then we had speakers from other parts of the country. Now, we couldn't have done that in quite the same way in the live event, because we were able to add extra viewpoints and perspectives. So sort of final message really is it's not easy. It's got to be very, very sensitively done, and it's exhausting. So we're so keen to get back into face to face workshops, and we've actually managed to do a few. So we've had a face to face workshop with a children's hospice recently. And the emotion in the room, you can imagine such a sensitive topic, but for people to be able to come together, face to face to talk. It was quite extraordinary. So bit of a longer answer, but it's it's subtle, and it's difficult. So Flo and I had a bit of a rant about co-production and making it real and how perhaps our Nobody's Patient work hasn't had as much impact as it could have had, how the resources that are already out in hospitals could be used a bit more effectively.
Florence Wilcock 39:46
So if you see a gap, and I'm hoping today will light a bit of a fire again, to take these things and run with it because yes, you're right. It's got some outcomes, but not nearly enough.
Gill Phillips 40:00
And that clearly has been like Nobody's Project potentially. And that is the challenge of co-production. So for a Whose Shoes workshop ... people love it, and a maternity unit can run a session because they're in control of it. But as soon as things start to be genuinely owned by different services, it's in danger of being Nobody's Project. It takes someone like Joanne Minford, the fantastic pediatrician up in Liverpool, me with the foresight to license their package across Liverpool Women's and Alder Hey. And for the chief executive support it - these are the kind of factors that actually make the magic outcomes like a new neonatal unit.
Helen Lee 40:42
Yeah, I was just gonna say, and absolutely we, it is about putting your money where your mouth is, and doing it. And we are doing some things nationally, to try and better align things. We're doing work with the Improvement Directorate to align co-production. So co-production needs to be at the heart of what we do, that we can't improve services if we're not doing that in partnership with people with lived experience. We've got a long way to go with that. But we are championing that and we are seeing some movement and we are seeing a shift nationally where other programmes, their interest is piqued. And they're asking questions about ... can you come and talk to us about that, because we would really like to understand a little bit more about it, and shift, shift it and we will get there. I have every confidence that we will get there. And it's just so amazing that we've had we've had 155 People join today. So fantastic. Thank you very much, everybody. It's been really interesting.
Cristina Serrao 41:36
A great way to start the year..
Gill Phillips 41:42
I hope you have enjoyed this episode. If so, please subscribe now to hear more of these fascinating conversations on your favorite podcast platform. And please leave a review. I tweet as @WhoseShoes, thank you for being on this journey with me. And let's hope that together we can make a difference.