NHS Institute, Living our Local Values
Development of a Values Development Resource for the NHS. October 2008 – July 2009
In October 2008, and in response to the publication of the NHS-wide values in The NHS Constitution, SHM was commissioned in partnership with PA Consulting to develop a set of tools and approaches that could be used in all NHS settings and by every type of NHS organisation to help staff surface, refresh, or embed organisational values. The work was commissioned based on the recognition that simply having a set of values ‘on paper’ is not enough for them to be effective; values have to be embedded, and, most importantly lived—enacted in people’s behaviour. The way in which the project sought to support NHS organisations in engaging staff, patients and the public around their values was derived from principles emerging from the NHS Institute’s work on the power of social movements as a means of transforming healthcare organisations.
SHM conducted research to understand best practice in values development from a range of sectors, and then engaged three NHS Field Test Sites in the NHS South West area – a care trust, a mental health trust and an acute Foundation Trust – to co-design ways of assessing how well local values were being lived, and identify tools that might help further embed those values. Out of this process, SHM developed a simple diagnostic tool to enable NHS organisations to identify quickly and easily how well they are currently living their local values, and to determine which approaches and instruments are best suited to helping them live their values more comprehensively. SHM and PA collated best practice tools and techniques into a values development resource, which is designed in a modular fashion to enable NHS organisations to ‘pick and mix’ the right combination of approaches that reflects their particular situation.
The process of co-design and co-development within each of the Field Test Sites was organised around different staff engagement opportunities: workshops with a cross-section of staff, Board meetings, departmental meetings, and individual face-to-face interviews. The process enabled us to test what would really work, as well as gain insights into the challenges and opportunities that might be faced by other organisations elsewhere within the NHS when applying the values development approaches.
Following the initial phase of work with the field test sites, we began to promote dissemination and further context testing by engaging organisations as learning partners from the wider NHS system (22 different organisations from across the UK) in a series of three ‘Accelerated Change Events’ (ACE).
At the first ACE we encouraged learning partners to reflect on what values are and how they apply to everything they do. For the second ACE we focused on the link between values and improved patient experiences, as well as how to engage patients into the values work. The aim of the last ACE was to encourage the learning partners to start sharing their own stories about their values journeys to date and to learn from each other. Throughout the engagement we asked the learning partners to provide feedback on the materials we were developing to ensure the final Values Development Resource was co-developed with those very organisations that will be spearheading its use within the system going forward.
[The NHS Institute is planning to launch the Values Development Resource in autumn 2009]
“This project has provided terrific learning for all of us – working with PA and SHM has been incredibly rewarding. It might seem that this is just about good partnership but it has been much deeper than that. There has been a delicate balancing act between working as equal partners and acknowledging when real content expertise is required and who is best placed to provide that. I am incredibly proud of both the process and the final output.” Liz Carter, Project Lead for Living our Local Values, NHS Institute.
Development of a Values Development Resource for the NHS. October 2008 – July 2009
In October 2008, and in response to the publication of the NHS-wide values in The NHS Constitution, SHM was commissioned in partnership with PA Consulting to develop a set of tools and approaches that could be used in all NHS settings and by every type of NHS organisation to help staff surface, refresh, or embed organisational values. The work was commissioned based on the recognition that simply having a set of values ‘on paper’ is not enough for them to be effective; values have to be embedded, and, most importantly lived—enacted in people’s behaviour. The way in which the project sought to support NHS organisations in engaging staff, patients and the public around their values was derived from principles emerging from the NHS Institute’s work on the power of social movements as a means of transforming healthcare organisations.
SHM conducted research to understand best practice in values development from a range of sectors, and then engaged three NHS Field Test Sites in the NHS South West area – a care trust, a mental health trust and an acute Foundation Trust – to co-design ways of assessing how well local values were being lived, and identify tools that might help further embed those values. Out of this process, SHM developed a simple diagnostic tool to enable NHS organisations to identify quickly and easily how well they are currently living their local values, and to determine which approaches and instruments are best suited to helping them live their values more comprehensively. SHM and PA collated best practice tools and techniques into a values development resource, which is designed in a modular fashion to enable NHS organisations to ‘pick and mix’ the right combination of approaches that reflects their particular situation.
The process of co-design and co-development within each of the Field Test Sites was organised around different staff engagement opportunities: workshops with a cross-section of staff, Board meetings, departmental meetings, and individual face-to-face interviews. The process enabled us to test what would really work, as well as gain insights into the challenges and opportunities that might be faced by other organisations elsewhere within the NHS when applying the values development approaches.
Following the initial phase of work with the field test sites, we began to promote dissemination and further context testing by engaging organisations as learning partners from the wider NHS system (22 different organisations from across the UK) in a series of three ‘Accelerated Change Events’ (ACE).
At the first ACE we encouraged learning partners to reflect on what values are and how they apply to everything they do. For the second ACE we focused on the link between values and improved patient experiences, as well as how to engage patients into the values work. The aim of the last ACE was to encourage the learning partners to start sharing their own stories about their values journeys to date and to learn from each other. Throughout the engagement we asked the learning partners to provide feedback on the materials we were developing to ensure the final Values Development Resource was co-developed with those very organisations that will be spearheading its use within the system going forward.
[The NHS Institute is planning to launch the Values Development Resource in autumn 2009]
“This project has provided terrific learning for all of us – working with PA and SHM has been incredibly rewarding. It might seem that this is just about good partnership but it has been much deeper than that. There has been a delicate balancing act between working as equal partners and acknowledging when real content expertise is required and who is best placed to provide that. I am incredibly proud of both the process and the final output.” Liz Carter, Project Lead for Living our Local Values, NHS Institute.
