Effective and Appropriate Sharing of Information (EASI): workforce development materials for improved multi-agency public service delivery
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Bradford
Department Name: Faculty of Management and Law
Abstract
This project uses social science research from the University of Bradford and Leeds Metropolitan University to develop a new training programme for people delivering public services, such as social workers, nurses, doctors, police officers and teachers. The training is to improve how information about members of the public is shared between the different organisations that provide services. It supplements (rather than replaces) existing training on information sharing and is different because it uses the findings from social science research to help professionals think in new ways about how they share information about members of the public.
People working to deliver public services are required to work with the personal information of all of us who use those services. In many cases this is sensitive information, given in confidence, and professionals must take care to protect our data. At the same time, they are being asked to improve services by working more closely with their counterparts in other organisations, passing more information between them. This means there is less chance that members of the public will feel as though they are being passed from one service to another when they need help and also that there will be less likelihood of 'falling through the cracks' between services. Collaboration can lead to more efficient services because some duplication can be avoided. In addition, by working together, professionals are more likely to spot when children and vulnerable adults are at risk of harm because they can see all the different pieces of the jigsaw puzzle rather than just the one piece they would see otherwise.
Decisions about whether and when to share information, are not always straightforward. There is legislation and guidance available to help steer public service workers to the right outcome but every situation is different and despite all the existing guidance and training available, professionals can still struggle to know what to do for the best. The training created by this project aims to help professionals share information well, improving the services received by the public in the process.
The project researchers will create the training programme and will work with the City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council and an existing national project, called Improving Information Sharing and Management, to test it (probably in Bradford, Manchester and Leicestershire). The training programme and materials will be revised as a result of feedback from the trainees. Once finalised, the documentation will be made freely available and its use will be tracked so evidence on the benefits can be gathered.
The programme is expected to consist of two one-day training sessions, three to four weeks apart. This allows course participants to apply what they have learnt in their first session to their daily working lives, knowing that they will be able to bring any queries back to the second session (in which reflections on changes to professional practice will be shared). This structure means that what has been learned is less likely to be forgotten and also that if there are real-life situations the training could not help with, relevant revisions can be made to. The project will create all the materials needed, based on findings from social science research previously undertaken by the project researchers. New ideas will be presented that have never been used in this kind of training before which should help professionals to improve their practice, leading to:
- improved, more 'joined up', and more trusted public services
- better protected personal and sensitive data
- better value for money (through reduced duplication across services and more effective services)
In the long term, through contributing to improved service quality and efficiency, the project should have a positive impact on the health and well-being of the nation.
People working to deliver public services are required to work with the personal information of all of us who use those services. In many cases this is sensitive information, given in confidence, and professionals must take care to protect our data. At the same time, they are being asked to improve services by working more closely with their counterparts in other organisations, passing more information between them. This means there is less chance that members of the public will feel as though they are being passed from one service to another when they need help and also that there will be less likelihood of 'falling through the cracks' between services. Collaboration can lead to more efficient services because some duplication can be avoided. In addition, by working together, professionals are more likely to spot when children and vulnerable adults are at risk of harm because they can see all the different pieces of the jigsaw puzzle rather than just the one piece they would see otherwise.
Decisions about whether and when to share information, are not always straightforward. There is legislation and guidance available to help steer public service workers to the right outcome but every situation is different and despite all the existing guidance and training available, professionals can still struggle to know what to do for the best. The training created by this project aims to help professionals share information well, improving the services received by the public in the process.
The project researchers will create the training programme and will work with the City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council and an existing national project, called Improving Information Sharing and Management, to test it (probably in Bradford, Manchester and Leicestershire). The training programme and materials will be revised as a result of feedback from the trainees. Once finalised, the documentation will be made freely available and its use will be tracked so evidence on the benefits can be gathered.
The programme is expected to consist of two one-day training sessions, three to four weeks apart. This allows course participants to apply what they have learnt in their first session to their daily working lives, knowing that they will be able to bring any queries back to the second session (in which reflections on changes to professional practice will be shared). This structure means that what has been learned is less likely to be forgotten and also that if there are real-life situations the training could not help with, relevant revisions can be made to. The project will create all the materials needed, based on findings from social science research previously undertaken by the project researchers. New ideas will be presented that have never been used in this kind of training before which should help professionals to improve their practice, leading to:
- improved, more 'joined up', and more trusted public services
- better protected personal and sensitive data
- better value for money (through reduced duplication across services and more effective services)
In the long term, through contributing to improved service quality and efficiency, the project should have a positive impact on the health and well-being of the nation.
Planned Impact
Anticipated benefits are as follows: (See also the impact logic diagram in the pathways to impact section)
1. Practitioners (whether direct or indirect beneficiaries): practitioners are challenged to think differently about information sharing and will gain access to materials, grounded in academic research, which have not been made available in other information sharing training and guidance platforms; they are given new tools to work with and a supportive multi-professional environment in which to question their current thinking. The legal and policy guidance they might already have seen or used is reframed to give more confidence in sharing information effectively and appropriately.
2. Academic partners: the project will offer a direct route to tangible impact from previous research. This will then also provide higher visibility for the HEIs and their research endeavours. The project offers a modest opportunity for commercialisation through the marketing of continuing professional development expertise. Individual academics working on the project will enjoy the satisfaction of seeing their research find a realisation in the 'real world' and will benefit in terms of their career achievements. They will also learn from the knowledge exchange activity and this will contribute to academic knowledge.
3. Service delivery organisations (whether direct or indirect beneficiaries): the information sharing between professionals in different organisations should improve as a result of the project, becoming both more appropriate and more effective, resulting in improved public service delivery. There will then be a greater potential for realignment of services bringing service efficiencies and further service quality improvements. Individuals working on the project from service delivery partners will benefit from a close working relationship with academics, experiencing the practical benefits from original research and having the opportunity to embed some of the learning from the project in their own organisations and practices.
4. Troubled Families Programme and other multi-agency initiatives: Benefits will be direct in the case of the localities benefitting from the pilot trainings. If the project can contribute to improvements in information sharing practice, making the materials freely available , this will indirectly benefit the whole Troubled Families programme and the other initiatives supported by the Improving Information Sharing and Management Exemplar.
5. Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) and HM Treasury (HMT): as sponsor department for the Troubled Families programme and for the exemplar project, CLG will indirectly benefit from the project if it contributes to the success of programmes such as Troubled Families. Similarly, HMT will indirectly benefit as the TF programme seeks to make efficiencies, partly as a result of being able to realign services through improved information sharing.
6. ESRC: The research council will benefit indirectly from the project's success as there will be evidence of a clear route from ESRC funding of original research through ESRC funding of knowledge exchange to real impact on public services, projecting through the impact logic to the improvement of the nation's health and well-being.
7. The general public as service users: In some ways, the most important group of beneficiaries are members of the public who rely on public services to enable them to live with, generally, high levels of health and well-being. With public finances even more stretched, it is important that innovations are made to service delivery and one potential solution is to realign services to both improve quality and increase efficiency through services working better together. This depends on effective and appropriate sharing of personal and sensitive information, however, and the proposed project can support this, indirectly benefitting members of the public.
1. Practitioners (whether direct or indirect beneficiaries): practitioners are challenged to think differently about information sharing and will gain access to materials, grounded in academic research, which have not been made available in other information sharing training and guidance platforms; they are given new tools to work with and a supportive multi-professional environment in which to question their current thinking. The legal and policy guidance they might already have seen or used is reframed to give more confidence in sharing information effectively and appropriately.
2. Academic partners: the project will offer a direct route to tangible impact from previous research. This will then also provide higher visibility for the HEIs and their research endeavours. The project offers a modest opportunity for commercialisation through the marketing of continuing professional development expertise. Individual academics working on the project will enjoy the satisfaction of seeing their research find a realisation in the 'real world' and will benefit in terms of their career achievements. They will also learn from the knowledge exchange activity and this will contribute to academic knowledge.
3. Service delivery organisations (whether direct or indirect beneficiaries): the information sharing between professionals in different organisations should improve as a result of the project, becoming both more appropriate and more effective, resulting in improved public service delivery. There will then be a greater potential for realignment of services bringing service efficiencies and further service quality improvements. Individuals working on the project from service delivery partners will benefit from a close working relationship with academics, experiencing the practical benefits from original research and having the opportunity to embed some of the learning from the project in their own organisations and practices.
4. Troubled Families Programme and other multi-agency initiatives: Benefits will be direct in the case of the localities benefitting from the pilot trainings. If the project can contribute to improvements in information sharing practice, making the materials freely available , this will indirectly benefit the whole Troubled Families programme and the other initiatives supported by the Improving Information Sharing and Management Exemplar.
5. Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) and HM Treasury (HMT): as sponsor department for the Troubled Families programme and for the exemplar project, CLG will indirectly benefit from the project if it contributes to the success of programmes such as Troubled Families. Similarly, HMT will indirectly benefit as the TF programme seeks to make efficiencies, partly as a result of being able to realign services through improved information sharing.
6. ESRC: The research council will benefit indirectly from the project's success as there will be evidence of a clear route from ESRC funding of original research through ESRC funding of knowledge exchange to real impact on public services, projecting through the impact logic to the improvement of the nation's health and well-being.
7. The general public as service users: In some ways, the most important group of beneficiaries are members of the public who rely on public services to enable them to live with, generally, high levels of health and well-being. With public finances even more stretched, it is important that innovations are made to service delivery and one potential solution is to realign services to both improve quality and increase efficiency through services working better together. This depends on effective and appropriate sharing of personal and sensitive information, however, and the proposed project can support this, indirectly benefitting members of the public.
Organisations
- University of Bradford (Lead Research Organisation)
- LOUGHBOROUGH UNIVERSITY (Collaboration)
- MANCHESTER METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY (Collaboration)
- Newcastle University (Collaboration)
- Centre of Excellence for Information Sharing (Collaboration)
- University of East Anglia (Collaboration)
- IISAM National Exemplar Project (Project Partner)
- Bradford Metropolitan District Council (Project Partner)
Publications
Nicola Underdown (Co-Author)
(2013)
SUPPORTING PUBLIC SERVICES TO IMPROVE THE SHARING OF SERVICE USER INFORMATION
Richardson, S.
(2014)
Developing Multi-professional Teamwork in Integrated Children's Services
| Description | 1. There continues to be a need for face-to-face, multi-agency, practitioner development workshops aimed at improving the sharing of information in public services. These would target for example health workers, social workers, teachers, police officers, housing officers, employment officers, support workers. 2. The project has developed a workshop programme to meet this need. 3. The two main elements of the workshops, a) formal taught input, based on social science research findings and b) multi-agency scenario-based group tasks, are both important. While participants generally found the content useful, many reporting that it gave them new ways of thinking about information sharing, what was equally important was to work in a 'safe' way with colleagues from other services, hearing their stories and understanding why they need to work differently from each other when sharing information, particularly with respect to confidentiality and seeking consent to share. 4. The separation of two to four weeks between the two workshop days was important for consolidation of learning and reflection. 5. There were some variations in participant response across the three workshops conducted in Bradford (20 participants), Greater Manchester (30 participants) and Leicestershire (22 participants). More may be learned about exactly what variables are at play from the on-going evaluation activity that will be reported on in the project impact report (2015). 6. It was reported by employer organisations that if the workshops were to be scaled up to be offered to all relevant staff, two full days was too long for practitioners to be away from the front line for what is seen as 'training'. As a result of this finding, an alternative, blended learning, format was developed which reduces the face to face element to two half days (still separated by two to four weeks). This was tried in Blaby District within the project lifetime and, from the investigators' perspective and the feedback received, was as successful as (although noticeably different from) the full two day version in terms of encouraging new ways of thinking and doing around information sharing. 7. A second variation to the format was tried as a result of an invitation from the public service network organisation iNetwork. This not only attempted to create an understanding of the differences across professional and service divides but also across the divide between practitioners and information governance managers. From the investigators' perspective, this was less successful but there is the potential to further research this possibility as it could potentially be extremely fruitful. |
| Exploitation Route | The investigators have plans for further, related, research. Through the project, the new government-funded Centre of Excellence for Information Sharing has brought the project investigators together with colleagues in Newcastle University, Manchester Metropolitan University, Loughborough University and the University of East Anglia, to help shape a new research agenda for improving information sharing in public services. This group of researchers has now been awarded an ESRC seminar series grant in order to move this work on. A book chapter using ideas from this project has been published in a book targeting professionals in children's services so this material is now available to practitioners. |
| Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Healthcare,Government, Democracy and Justice |
| Description | The findings are being used by public service delivery organisations; commissioners of public services including local government; central government; the government-funded Centre of Excellence for Information Sharing and the organisations supported by the Centre. They are being used to open up the discussion about the way in which citizens' personal and sometimes sensitive information can be better shared across service and organisational boundaries, for example when using health, education, housing, adults' or children's, employment and criminal justice services. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2014 |
| Sector | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Healthcare,Government, Democracy and Justice |
| Impact Types | Policy & public services |
| Description | National information sharing collaboration |
| Organisation | Centre of Excellence for Information Sharing |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | The project research team brought a new perspective to national thinking about the problems of information sharing that had not previously been considered. The project emphasised the needs of practitioners for good multi-agency support and development and importantly introduced the concept of 'primary focus' of different service professionals. When professionals from different services understand each others' primary focus and the implications for confidentiality and practice issues such as seeking consent to share, this can improve the quality of information sharing practice. The contribution from the project has been to bring ideas from border and boundary thinking and particularly from theories of communities of practice to the collaboration. The project team contributed a sector specialism in children's services but have worked across the whole range of public services. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Each of the other partners has made their own distinct contribution. Researchers from Newcastle University, Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of East Anglia had worked together previously on research in the public sector and on information sharing. They bring expertise on integration and information sharing in health and social care from a socio-technical systems perspective, with previous research in the areas of families, children, older people and smart cities. The centre of excellence for information sharing was pivotal in bringing the partners together to form this collaboration. Newcastle University was the lead partner on the grant awarded to this partnership for an ESRC funded seminar series. The funding attributed to Newcastle University therefore refers to this grant. |
| Impact | None to date other than the ESRC seminar series grant that resulted from this collaboration. |
| Start Year | 2013 |
| Description | National information sharing collaboration |
| Organisation | Loughborough University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | The project research team brought a new perspective to national thinking about the problems of information sharing that had not previously been considered. The project emphasised the needs of practitioners for good multi-agency support and development and importantly introduced the concept of 'primary focus' of different service professionals. When professionals from different services understand each others' primary focus and the implications for confidentiality and practice issues such as seeking consent to share, this can improve the quality of information sharing practice. The contribution from the project has been to bring ideas from border and boundary thinking and particularly from theories of communities of practice to the collaboration. The project team contributed a sector specialism in children's services but have worked across the whole range of public services. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Each of the other partners has made their own distinct contribution. Researchers from Newcastle University, Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of East Anglia had worked together previously on research in the public sector and on information sharing. They bring expertise on integration and information sharing in health and social care from a socio-technical systems perspective, with previous research in the areas of families, children, older people and smart cities. The centre of excellence for information sharing was pivotal in bringing the partners together to form this collaboration. Newcastle University was the lead partner on the grant awarded to this partnership for an ESRC funded seminar series. The funding attributed to Newcastle University therefore refers to this grant. |
| Impact | None to date other than the ESRC seminar series grant that resulted from this collaboration. |
| Start Year | 2013 |
| Description | National information sharing collaboration |
| Organisation | Manchester Metropolitan University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | The project research team brought a new perspective to national thinking about the problems of information sharing that had not previously been considered. The project emphasised the needs of practitioners for good multi-agency support and development and importantly introduced the concept of 'primary focus' of different service professionals. When professionals from different services understand each others' primary focus and the implications for confidentiality and practice issues such as seeking consent to share, this can improve the quality of information sharing practice. The contribution from the project has been to bring ideas from border and boundary thinking and particularly from theories of communities of practice to the collaboration. The project team contributed a sector specialism in children's services but have worked across the whole range of public services. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Each of the other partners has made their own distinct contribution. Researchers from Newcastle University, Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of East Anglia had worked together previously on research in the public sector and on information sharing. They bring expertise on integration and information sharing in health and social care from a socio-technical systems perspective, with previous research in the areas of families, children, older people and smart cities. The centre of excellence for information sharing was pivotal in bringing the partners together to form this collaboration. Newcastle University was the lead partner on the grant awarded to this partnership for an ESRC funded seminar series. The funding attributed to Newcastle University therefore refers to this grant. |
| Impact | None to date other than the ESRC seminar series grant that resulted from this collaboration. |
| Start Year | 2013 |
| Description | National information sharing collaboration |
| Organisation | Newcastle University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | The project research team brought a new perspective to national thinking about the problems of information sharing that had not previously been considered. The project emphasised the needs of practitioners for good multi-agency support and development and importantly introduced the concept of 'primary focus' of different service professionals. When professionals from different services understand each others' primary focus and the implications for confidentiality and practice issues such as seeking consent to share, this can improve the quality of information sharing practice. The contribution from the project has been to bring ideas from border and boundary thinking and particularly from theories of communities of practice to the collaboration. The project team contributed a sector specialism in children's services but have worked across the whole range of public services. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Each of the other partners has made their own distinct contribution. Researchers from Newcastle University, Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of East Anglia had worked together previously on research in the public sector and on information sharing. They bring expertise on integration and information sharing in health and social care from a socio-technical systems perspective, with previous research in the areas of families, children, older people and smart cities. The centre of excellence for information sharing was pivotal in bringing the partners together to form this collaboration. Newcastle University was the lead partner on the grant awarded to this partnership for an ESRC funded seminar series. The funding attributed to Newcastle University therefore refers to this grant. |
| Impact | None to date other than the ESRC seminar series grant that resulted from this collaboration. |
| Start Year | 2013 |
| Description | National information sharing collaboration |
| Organisation | University of East Anglia |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | The project research team brought a new perspective to national thinking about the problems of information sharing that had not previously been considered. The project emphasised the needs of practitioners for good multi-agency support and development and importantly introduced the concept of 'primary focus' of different service professionals. When professionals from different services understand each others' primary focus and the implications for confidentiality and practice issues such as seeking consent to share, this can improve the quality of information sharing practice. The contribution from the project has been to bring ideas from border and boundary thinking and particularly from theories of communities of practice to the collaboration. The project team contributed a sector specialism in children's services but have worked across the whole range of public services. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Each of the other partners has made their own distinct contribution. Researchers from Newcastle University, Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of East Anglia had worked together previously on research in the public sector and on information sharing. They bring expertise on integration and information sharing in health and social care from a socio-technical systems perspective, with previous research in the areas of families, children, older people and smart cities. The centre of excellence for information sharing was pivotal in bringing the partners together to form this collaboration. Newcastle University was the lead partner on the grant awarded to this partnership for an ESRC funded seminar series. The funding attributed to Newcastle University therefore refers to this grant. |
| Impact | None to date other than the ESRC seminar series grant that resulted from this collaboration. |
| Start Year | 2013 |