Developing resources to support practitioners to use Talking Points with older people with communication difficulties

Accessing Health and Healthcare - Projects

Lanarkshire pilot sites Y2 Project

Talking Points:

Talking Points (formerly UDSET) has been developed by the Joint Improvement Team to support a focus on the outcomes important to users of community care services in Scotland, with a related version (CDSET) for unpaid carers. Outcomes in this context are understood both as the goals that users and carers want to achieve in partnership with services, and as the impact of services on individual lives.

Talking Points builds on previous research done at York University (Qureshi 2001) and Glasgow University (Petch et al 2007). Since Spring 2007, a number of partnerships have piloted the approach through outcomes focused reviews, and more recently assessment and care planning. Evidence from pilot sites has confirmed previous research findings that this approach can improve outcomes for individuals, and support more relevant interventions.

It is also viewed positively by staff, who prefer the conversational and person-centred approach to assessment, care planning and review.

Connect in Care Involvement:

Interest in using Talking Points has been expressed by health partnerships across Scotland. One issue highlighted by pilot work so far is that service users with communication difficulties (due to cognitive or physical impairment) may be excluded from the process because staff feel unconfident and ill-equipped to hold such conversations.

The proposal is that Connect in Care will work with one of the health partnerships that wants to introduce Talking Points to explore different supports available (e.g. Talking Mats, Stirling Dementia Centre resources, Care Commission resources) with a view to a) evaluating what works best b) sharing that knowledge with others across Scotland using Talking Points.

An initial National Event will bring everyone together (funded by Scottish Gvt) and the pilot site & other partnerships will continue to share information during the course of the work.

Timeframe:

17th March: Ministerial Launch.

April: National Event involving all partnerships across Scotland who want to introduce Talking Points.

April-Sept: Pilot site applying and evaluating different resources to support conversations.

October: National Event