Expression of Interest

Pilot sites for Digital Inclusion Project for People with Learning Disabilities

Speak Out On Line

Introduction.

VoiceAbility is an advocacy, involvement and participation charity working with people with a wide range of disabilities in England. We have been funded by the Department of Health Innovation Fund to design, implement, and trial a digital platform for People with Learning Disabilities (PWLD)to engage with and inform local and national strategies, projects and services. The working title for this project is Speak Out on Line -SPOOL.

The Department of Health would like the project to be piloted in three Local Authority areas. We are seeking Expressions of Interest from Local Authorities to work alongside the SPOOL project team and pilot the work in their LA areas over a two year period, to trial the use of the digital platform in supporting consultation and engagement with PWLD.

Aims and Objectives

Objectives

SPOOL is designed to build and strengthen the skills and abilities of people with learning disabilities to exercise choice and control by engaging with and co-designing health and social care policy, strategy, service delivery and practice. It will be an invaluable way of seeking and being able to use feedback and insight from a key and vulnerable community.This intelligence can drive improvements in service quality and outcomes.

Spool is being run by the charity VoiceAbility. Our overarching strategic aims are to ensure that People with Learning Disabilities have:

  1. A right to be heard
  2. A right to have the same choice, control and freedom as any other citizen
  3. A right to be safe from violence or abuse

Vision

We believe that people who use services and carers should be valued by organisations as equal partners, can share power and have influence over decisions made. We are committed to achieving equality of opportunity for people with disabilities and mental health problems.

SPOOL will support this vision by:

  • Combining on-line engagement with supported face-to-face discussion enabling PWLD to share their views and experiences of the health and social care they receive.
  • Improvethe response rate of PWLD to consultations and surveys
  • Ensure improved response times to consultations
  • Enhance digital inclusion by extending and tailoring methods of public engagement and information-sharing that are taken for granted by almost every other user-community.
  • Ensure an increasing number of PWLD are supported and empowered to enjoy the same sort of access to on-line information, discussion and expression that people without LD take for granted.

SPOOL is designed to offer cost savings to health and local authority commissioners, planners and managers, by enabling PWLD to access and engage with consultation exercises in a new and innovative way. It is also designed to increase the numbers of people who can access and engage those exercises, increasing the validity of the responses gained and providing richer and more valuable data to inform future service delivery and commissioning.

Stakeholder Engagement

In each pilot area we will work closely with service providers, commissioners and service users, families and carers to co-create the SPOOL platform. The platform will be rigorously tested, with repeat iterations to ensure success.

SPOOL project team

The team brings together a wide range of skills and experiences

Sue Reed – Project Manager VoiceAbility

Jenni Parker – Social Impact Designer

Neon Tribe – User centred, agile Web Development Company

Ali Fawkes – Creative work with children and adults with a wide range of learning disabilities

Public Perspectives – Project evaluation

Methodology

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  • Stakeholder Mapping
  • Primary and secondary Research
  • Consult with user and systems experts
  • Co-creation
  • Prototyping
  • Iteration
  • Evaluation

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Commitment from pilot Local Authorities

If you are interested in being a pilot area you would be required to:

  • Identify a senior sponsor and main contact person to ensure the project works effectively
  • Enable the project team to work with local groups and individuals with learning disabilities to co-create the platform
  • Enable the project team to work with local service providers including social care, health, community organisations, police, and criminal justice team
  • Identify a recent consultation that you have done that involved people with learning disabilities and share results with SPOOL, and identify a consultation that will take place in the next 18 months that will involve people with learning disabilities
  • Develop with SPOOL team shared outcome and impact measures
  • Provide information to support project reporting to the Department of Health
  • Work in partnership with independent evaluation process.
  • Consider future sustainable use of the platform and next steps

Commitment from SPOOL to pilot sites

  • Dedicated link worker support
  • Access to SPOOL project team expertise
  • Training and development for staff in emerging communication and active involvement techniques
  • Co-creation,design and prototyping the model for service users and for staff members
  • Outcome and impact focused planning and delivery using a Theory of Change model
  • Benchmarking consultation/involvement with people with learning disabilities
  • Trial the platform and identify learning from process.
  • Embed changes
  • Robust independent evaluation

If you are interested in being part of the SPOOL pilot, please fill out the attached expression of interest proposal and send to Sue Reed (details below) by 20th November 2015. Successful applicants will be informed by 27th November 2015. If you would like more information or discussion please contact;

Sue Reed, Project Manager, VoiceAbility / 07557 851505

Mount Pleasant House, Huntingdon Road, Cambridge CB3 0NR

Speak Out On Line

If you would like to like to be kept informed on the progress of the project we will be running a regular blog spot, Twitter Feed and Facebook page,

We will also be sharing what we have learnt and outlining future plans at a conference in the Spring of 2017. If you would like to stay involved in SPOOL please sign up below.

Yes please, sign me up to SPOOL contact :

Name:

Job Title

Email:

Local Authority

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