FAQ about Year of Care Training

• What makes it Year of Care training?
  
• What are the fundamental principles behind the training?
  
• How are trainers accredited?
  
• How was the training developed?
  
• How is this training provided?
  
• What is the Train the trainers?
  
• What is Quality Assurance?
  
• How does an organisation prepare for the training?
  
• Will there be follow up training?
• Are there other associated modules?
  

What makes it Year of Care training?

Year of care training is the only quality assured national training programme that commissioners can be sure will deliver the key learning from the YOC pilot programme. This means that it is carefully crafted to address participants’ attitudes, skills and the infrastructure changes they need to make to implement “care planning”; it emphasises how care planning links to service organisation, redesign and commissioning the house model. This is essential to enable care planning to be embedded in mainstream practice long term. This means that organisations that sign up for this will need to work closely with local commissioners as well as practitioners who deliver care and need to have plans for rolling out this approach shortly after receiving the training.

What are the fundamental principles behind the training?

The training focuses on both the practical tools required to facilitate care planning and the consultation attitudes and skills required to ensure partnership working between people with diabetes and their health care professional.

This is not a counselling or motivational interviewing course although it both aims to make care more patient centred, and acknowledges the difficulties health care professionals have in discussing risk and challenging health behaviours and beliefs.

In particular there is an emphasis on:

• Active listening and rapport building
  
• Discussing and exploring issues and concerns raised by both parties
  
• Gently challenging ideas and concepts
  
• Encouraging a problem solving approach
  
• Goal setting and Action planning
  

Care planning training aims to give an overview of the structures and organisational processes that need to be in place to be able to deliver care planning and so isn’t exclusively focused on consultation skills.

How are trainers accredited?

The training isn’t formally accredited by a training institution. While the training programme for trainers focuses on personal development as well as delivery of the contents of the programme participants take part in a programme with a structured curriculum and learning outcomes, are supported to deliver their first course and then observed in practice to ensure they are delivering the YOC training to the appropriate standards.  Following successful completion names are held on a central YOCP partners register.

How was the training developed?

The training has been developed through a process of rigorous testing and feedback initially across 3 Year of care pilot sites (Tower Hamlets, North of Tyne and Kirklees and Calderdale) and subsequently in a prototype stage with 12 other communities.  It has been piloted and evaluated in the sites with extremely favourable benefits, including positive evaluation from those receiving the training and tangible changes to diabetes care in the practices where it has been implemented.

The training has been developed by a team from Northumbria HCF Trust, inclusive of GP’s, diabetologists, dietitians, nurses and psychologists. The training is responsive to feedback but changes are only made as part of a systematic process to to maintain integrity of delivery.

How is this training provided?

The training is provided locally, by 3 national facilitators to groups of up to 20 people. The participants are usually practice based staff (diabetes lead GP and practice nurse) and it is expected that they will adopt the approach and restructure their diabetes clinics shortly after receiving training. In some sites local specialist staff have also been involved.

The training consists of one day training with a follow up session (a half day) about six weeks later and involves diverse training methods and group/individual participation.

What is the Train the trainers?

To build capacity the national training team will continue to support local health communities by training local people as Year of Care trainers to deliver training to others and potentially help local teams to sustain and embed care planning long term. It is envisaged that these trainers are identified prior to an organisation taking on Year of Care training and that they should attend the first training delivered by the national team in their area. They will then be trained to deliver more training regionally/locally and after being quality assured delivering the training, they will become a registered Year of Care Trainer.

What is Quality Assurance?

This means that those commissioners and others who procure this training can be sure that it is delivered consistently and according to the principles and curriculum that have been shown to be effective.  Trainers who do not meet the criteria after training, mentoring and other support cannot be included in the trainers register

How does an organisation prepare for the training?

In order to maximise the impact of training, organisations will need to do a considerable amount of preparatory work, this will include

• Identification of local trainers, champions , facilitators and a project lead
  
• Processes to engage and make practices aware of Year of Care
  
• Identification of funding and suitable venues for training
  
• Commissioning mechanisms to secure implementation and embedding
  
• IT and evaluation processes worked out  locally  - YOC guidance available
  
• User involvement
  

Organisations will be offered the opportunity to have a site visit to clarify the requirements for Year of Care and demonstrate how they plan to implement the changes.

For more information please read Information and Guidance about National Care Planning Training (PDF179 KB)

Following this the National Training team can provide a “taster” day to engage the first cohort of up to 10 practices with the aim of developing local champions, facilitators and trainers.

Will there be follow up training?

Aside from the half day follow up, there won’t be any further training offered, although a network of individuals involved in implementing care planning will be happy to provide advice and signposting if required, and ongoing modules to mentor and support clinical teams are currently under development

Are there other associated modules?

YOCP are prepared to consider requests for bespoke local solutions to be developed.

Modules currently under development include

• Training for integrated community teams - working with people with LTCs risk assessed s in the top 7% of the practice population as likely to use unscheduled care
  
• Extended Consultation Skills for clinical staff
  
• A programme to set up local mentoring and support to build confidence, embed and transfer skills and attitudes across the local community.