Calderdale Framework founders, Jayne Duffy and Rachael Smith.
The South Island was extremely fortunate to host the UK founders of the Calderdale Framework, a skill sharing and skill delegation tool, last month.
Founders Jayne Duffy and Rachael Smith, from Effective Workforce Solutions Ltd, held a 10-day workshop to train two facilitators to become certified practitioners. This will enable the education of future facilitators in New Zealand. The pair also oversaw the training of a new group of 18 facilitators from all over the South Island.
Held in November, the group of facilitators – made up of allied health staff from each South Island DHB – were assessed and credited to support the roll-out of the Calderdale Framework and implement it within their local areas. The evidence-based framework has a patient safety focus, providing a systematic, objective method of reviewing skill, role and service design, to ensure safe, effective and productive people-centred care. As part of the training, the facilitators will complete a Calderdale Framework skill sharing or skill delegation project in their work environment, over a 12-month period.
Anne Buckley, Allied Health Facilitator of the South Island Workforce Development Hub, says eight facilitators were trained in 2015 and this year was the first time practitioners have been trained. “Up until now, we’ve had to rely on trainers from Queensland and the UK, so this will ensure we have a sustainable group of facilitators who are able to work within their specific areas, throughout the South Island.”One of the two new practitioners, Hilary Exton, says working with the founders was a brilliant opportunity to ask questions and get clarification in preparation for leading the facilitator training. “Jayne and Rachael have a wealth of experience in developing new roles and ways of learning. They also shared many positive examples, as well as the challenges they came across along the way of developing and using the tool, which was really interesting and helpful to learn from.”
Originally developed as a result of clinical need 10 years ago, physiotherapists Jayne and Rachael created the methodology when they were working in an early orthopaedic discharge service. “The service was brand new so there was a lot of pressure for it to be delivered safely and effectively for patients,” says Rachael. “We had to make sure our support staff were delivering care to the required standard, so we began developing the Calderdale Framework to ensure support staff were trained to the right standard and that we had adequate governance around those roles.”
The pair created Effective Workforce Solutions to ensure effective application of the framework, which expanded over the years both geographically and to include a wider group of disciplines. In the UK, the framework has been used extensively to integrate teams throughout health and social care, as well as across health education. “The application is becoming more and more widespread and we’ve used it across Queensland, and into Western Australia,” says Rachael. “Now we’ve expanded even further south and we’re delighted to have done so.”There are six existing Calderdale Framework projects across the five South Island DHBs, with the majority focused on more effective use of the Allied Health assistant workforce in clinical care. The new facilitators will build on these initial projects.
