together
UEA Health and Social Care Partners' quarterly magazine Summer 2021
Partnership Projects Sweep UEA Innovation and Impact Awards Annual Report Launch Highlights Collaboration UEAHSCP Funding Call Announced New Tool Aims to Keep Children Safe Online
Improving Care Through Collaboration
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WELCOME TO THE SUMMER 2021 EDITION OF TOGETHER MAGAZINE It’s been a busy few months here at UEA Health and Social Care Partners, and our Summer 2021 edition of Together magazine is jam-packed full of the latest news. At the start of summer, we were honoured to be nominated for Partnership of the Year at UEA’s Innovation and Impact Awards, along with seven other UEAHSCP supported projects. Two partnership projects went on to win in the Partnership of the Year and in the Outstanding Contribution/Response to COVID-19 categories. We were also delighted to accept the Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Achievement for the Norwich Testing Initiative on behalf of the collaborative team from across Norwich Research Park – a truly phenomenal achievement. In July, we announced that we'll soon be accepting applications to our new funding call for 2021/22: Addressing our Health and Social Care Challenges through the Power of Collaboration. I’m thrilled to have the resources to support important health and social care research projects led by our partner organisations. I encourage you to visit the dedicated website to find out more about this funding call. We’re holding two webinars in September with further information – email ueahscp@uea.ac.uk to find out more, or make sure you’ve signed up to our email list to receive the latest news. And to round out the summer, in August we launched our latest Annual Report, highlighting some of our efforts across the region. I was blown away seeing the breadth of research activity the partnership has supported – thank you to everyone who contributed to the report, and I trust it gives you a sense of pride to see our cumulative efforts celebrated. I hope you have a safe summer and enjoy some deserved downtime with loved ones. If you'd like to find out more about any of the work featured, or you're interested in working with our team to grow your research, please get in touch to see where we can support you - ueahscp@uea.ac.uk. Mark Hitchcock, Managing Director UEA Health and Social Care Partners
In Today's Issue: New Annual Report............................................................................................................................p.3 Programme Funding Call...................................................................................................................p.4 Partnership Projects Sweep UEA Innovation and Impact Awards.................................................p.5 New 3D Printing Group Established.................................................................................................p.6 New Tool Launched To Keep Children Safe Online.........................................................................p.7 Professionals Who Support Vulnerable Young People Needed for Study....................................p.8 International Nurses Day Campaign Celebrates Local Nurses.......................................................p.9 Dying Matters Week By Compassionate Communitites East.........................................................p.10 MBA Essentials Course Launched for Health Sector Professionals...............................................p.11 Catch Up On The Latest Webinars....................................................................................................p.11
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Annual Report UEA Health and Social Care Partners is delighted to launch our latest Annual Report! Our latest Annual Report showcases our collective accomplishments in collaborative health and social care research across our community from April 2020 - March 2021. Our report covers an unprecedented period, and we’re so proud of what we’ve achieved together. Whilst the impact of coronavirus on research activity was extensive, we brought together a dedicated community of health and social care colleagues across the region to meet unparalleled challenges.
Learn more about our accomplishments thus far by reading our Annual Report here.
Membership has grown exponentially during this period, and we’ve played an integral part in many innovative projects. The report offers a selection of case studies demonstrating the impact of our researchers: from playing a major and multifaceted role in the response to the pandemic, to helping children and their families by supporting a personalised approach to anxiety management. With compassion and insight, we focus on meeting the needs of service users and professionals through the delivery of exceptional research, and we’ll continue to build on our strong foundation in the years to come.
Thank you to our partners and colleagues for their contributions to our latest Annual Report.
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Programme Funding Call UEA Health and Social Care Partners delighted to announce we'll soon be accepting applications to our new funding call for 2021/22: Addressing our Health and Social Care Challenges through the Power of Collaboration. We're looking for applications from our partner organisations for up to £25,000 for ambitious projects that deliver collaborative health and social care research for the benefit of our region. This call aims to grow further research collaboration across our partnership and to cultivate an environment for mutual research innovation. We will continue to provide support across a wide array of research and innovation, but our strategically important research themes are critical to the people of our region and will be our primary focus. They are: 1. Young people’s mental health 2. Health ageing 3. Living with long-term conditions These areas were identified in 2019 as key issues in the health and care of the Norfolk, Suffolk and North-East Essex population and UEAHSCP is committed to investing in research in these areas as a strategic priority.
Projects must be led by an individual employed by one of the UEAHSCP partner organisations: East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust James Paget University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust NHS Norfolk and Waveney Clinical Commissioning Group Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust Norfolk Community Health and Care NHS Trust Norfolk County Council Suffolk and North-East Essex CCGs The Queen Elizabeth King's Lynn Hospital NHS Foundation Trust West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust University of East Anglia Submissions will be welcome from 13 September 2021, with an application deadline of 15 October 2021. Please visit the dedicated website for all details of this programme funding call. Please get in touch with the team to speak about this opportunity.
We’re holding two online webinars, conducted on Microsoft Teams, where we’ll share further information about the funding call. These seminars will be informal and interactive, and we’re keen to answer your questions. These one-hour webinars will be held on: Monday 6 September, 2pm Wednesday 8 September, 10.30am Please email the Partnership support team at ueahscp@uea.ac.uk to register, specifying which time slot you wish to attend. We will be collating questions and answers during each webinar to share afterwards. You can also email the team if you wish to submit a question ahead of time.
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Partnership Projects Sweep UEA Innovation and Impact Awards! Following the Awards Ceremony in June, we’re delighted to announce that eight UEAHSCP-supported projects were nominated and that two projects won in the Partnership of the Year and Outstanding Contribution/Response to COVID-19 categories! In addition, the Norwich Testing Initiative won the Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Achievement. Congratulations go to all our partners involved in this important joint project; well done to our colleagues across Earlham Institute, John Innes Centre, The Quadram Institute, Norwich Research Park, Norwich Medical School, UEA IT and Computing services, and UEA School of Computing Science. The team at UEAHSCP were proud to be nominated in the Partnership of the Year category thank you to all of our colleagues and supporters. We’re even more motivated to continue to drive joint innovation across health and social care research. UEA Research & Innovation Services have held the Annual Innovation and Impact Awards since 2018 to recognise and reward research and innovation that goes above and beyond and makes a significant impact beyond academia. The awards are always fiercely competitive, highlighting some of the best and most ground-breaking UEA projects. This year, the UEA judging panel was joined by a guest judge for each category. Colleagues from partner organisations, including Archant, Barclays, Big C, Lotus, NHS Norfolk and Waveney CCG, Norwich Theatre, and Norfolk County Council, shared their knowledge and expertise.
UEAHSCP Managing Director Mark Hitchcock accepts the Chancellor's Award on behalf of the collaborative team across Norwich Research Park.
Winners were announced at the online ceremony on Thursday 17 June Watch the online ceremony embedded here or on YouTube here:
Congratulations to the partnership projects that were recognised: The SCORES Project, won for Partnership of the Year (Dr Michael Grey and Dr Sarah Hanson from UEAHSCP’s Concussion Action Programme and Deconditioning research groups, Ellen Boucher, and Prof Michael Hornberger); The C-19 Health Behaviour and Wellbeing Daily Tracker Study, won for Outstanding Contribution/Response to COVID-19 (Dr Felix Naughton and Prof Caitlin Notley from UEAHSCP’s Changing Behaviour research group); A Centenary of Caring, nominated for Outstanding Impact in Health, Wellbeing and Welfare (Prof Sally Hardy from UEAHSCP’s ImpACT research group); Compassionate Communities across East Anglia: a public health approach to palliative and end of life care, nominated for Partnership of the Year (Dr Guy Peryer from UEAHSCP’s Palliative Care research group).
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New 3D Printing Group Established UEAHSCP have launched a new group, Point-Of-Care 3D printing, led by Dr Sheng Qi, a Reader in Pharmaceutics at UEA’s School of Pharmacy. 3D printing has revolutionised many sectors, improving productivity and creating products that were not possible using traditional manufacturing methods. The influence of 3D printing is rapidly increasing in the health and social care sectors, particularly within acute hospital environments, and is emerging as a key enabler of personalised and cheaper treatment. Learning from the lessons from the COVID-19 crisis, the group has formed in response to the growing need to build flexibility and resilience into the manufacturing and supply capabilities of the NHS and to contribute to the Greener NHS agenda. The group aims to accurately identify highpriority clinical applications of 3D printing and build our regional research and manufacturing capability in medical and pharmaceutical 3D printing at the point-of-care. The UEA-led research in pharmaceutical 3D printing and the clinical partners’ expertise in medical 3D printing for surgical, radiotherapy and education form the foundation of this group. In the press release of their recently published work in May in the International Journal of Pharmaceutics, Dr Qi said: “Currently our medicines are manufactured in 'one-size-fitsall' fashion. “Personalised medicine uses new manufacturing technology to produce pills that have the accurate dose and drug combinations tailored to individual patients. This would allow the patients to get maximal drug benefits with minimal side effects. “Such treatment approaches can particularly benefit elderly patients who often have to take many different types of medicines per day and patients with complicated conditions.”
The newly formed group’s work, Dr Qi said, will build upon the foundation of this research to design the technology needed in future to produce personalised medicine at the point-of-care. “For health and social care, particularly acute hospital environments, 3D printing is emerging as integral to designing personalized and effective treatment with rapid service delivery and at a lower cost for certain patient populations.” - Dr Sheng Qi The group is composed of leading academics and clinicians from UEA, East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust, Loughborough University, The Queen Elizabeth Hospital King's Lynn NHS Foundation Trust, and West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, and has the vision and ambition to make our region the leader of transforming 3D printing technologies into cost-effective tools to serve the NHS and service users. UEAHSCP Managing Director Mark Hitchcock is delighted to welcome the new group into the partnership and anticipates their work will make a real difference to service user experience: “I’m excited by the opportunities that 3D printing offers in providing highly personalised care, particularly the group’s innovative research into printing medicines to an individual’s prescription”.
"Our group has the vision and ambition to be a regional leader in transforming 3D printing technologies into cost-effective tools to serve our NHS and our patients." - Dr Sheng Qi, Reader in Pharmaceutics, UEA, and Point-Of-Care 3D printing lead.
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New Tool Launched To Keep Children Safe Online
Research by LANTERN research group lead and Lecturer in Education Dr Simon P Hammond has helped to inform the development of an important new digital passport launching in May, designed to help children with care experience make the most of technology through relationship building and communication. The Digital Passport was the idea of Adrienne Katz and was created by her with expert input from Adam Gordon, Dr Simon P Hammond, Steve Bailey and other members of the UK Council for Internet Safety (UKCIS) Vulnerable Users Working Group. The Digital Passport enables care-experienced children to enjoy the benefits of online connectivity safely. It will provide details of the child’s knowledge and use of digital technology so that their wellbeing can be supported as well as helping carers to safeguard their online safety by being aware of their online capabilities. Dr Hammond said the resource is a critical tool to facilitate communication about digital communication: “One of the most important and effective ways of keeping children and young people safe online is for them to have regular and meaningful conversations with a trusted adult about what they do online, why they love it, and if they have any concerns”. Chair of the UKCIS Vulnerable Users Working Group Claire Levens says the passport will serve as an important resource to support foster carers in managing the crucial conversations that will help them understand, support and safeguard their child’s online life: “This digital passport will help initiate those conversations and to write down information. “It is vital that caregivers are equipped with bespoke understandings of these issues within the context of children and young people with care experiences in ways that enable them to flourish in this increasingly vital area”. According to the Vulnerable Users Working Group, we know that foster carers can be tech-hesitant and may default to removing devices and restricting digital access when, for many young people in care, it is the only way of connecting to friends and, where appropriate, family.
“Evidence shows that online risks are not evenly spread young people with offline vulnerabilities are more at risk online and, very often, are less supported. We need to do more work in addressing this, and the Digital Passport is an important first step.” -Dr Simon P. Hammond, Dr Simon P. Hammond, lecturer in education, UEA, and lantern group lead.
The tool: Helps enable the child’s digital life in a positive and supportive way Enables carers to clarify and support a discussion and understanding about online life Supports agreements about internet access and device use between carer and child Creates consistency for a child or young person if they move to another placement or home environment Is a record to improve safeguarding Helps make the most of what technology offers and opens opportunities for children and young people, especially those in or leaving care “Our work aims to provide professionals and young people with strategies, skills and knowledge to better navigate, recover and grow following online risk experiences. This new digital passport is a new resource” concluded Chair of the UKCIS Vulnerable Users Working Group Claire Levens. You can find the passport here.
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Professionals Who Support Vulnerable Young People Needed For Study Researchers from the LANTERN Network are currently seeking professionals who support vulnerable young people to take part in the ‘EVEN’ study (Exploring how the online lives of Vulnerable young people are supported by profEssioNals: The views of professionals, parents and young people). Online risks not evenly spread across the population as young people with offline vulnerabilities are more at risk online and, very often, less supported. Evidence indicates that knowing which offline vulnerabilities children and young people have enables professionals to predict the type of online risk encountered. However, interventions can only be meaningful if the adults supporting children and young people with vulnerabilities are confident, competent and resourceful as well as having the tools required to provide support. By taking part, you could help us understand how young people aged 8-16 years old and considered as vulnerable are currently supported in their online lives and how we may better support them in the future. The EVEN study has been commissioned by Internet Matters, a leading online safety organisation for parents, carers and professionals and funded by one of their corporate partners, Huawei, a leading global information and communications technology provider. If you’re interested in learning more, please email Dr Simon P Hammond at s.hammond@uea.ac.uk
Get involved: We are currently recruiting for this study and more information can be found here.
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International Nurses Day Campaign Celebrates Local Nurses In May, we marked International Nurses Day by celebrating nurses across our community and thanking them for their dedication. This year has been especially difficult due to the strain of the COVID-19 pandemic on our health and social care system. We featured some of our partnership’s leading nurses and highlighted their innovation, service delivery and leadership, including ground-breaking initiatives like designing an accessible COVID-19 vaccine clinic for those with learning disabilities and autism, setting up the reservist nurse scheme to attract nurses back to the NHS in its time of need, and much more. Read all of their stories here.
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Dying Matters Week 2021 Dying Matters Awareness Week was held in May, an annual event to encourage communities, individuals and organisations to come together and open the conversation around death, dying and bereavement. This year, Dying Matters Week focused on the importance of being 'in a good place to die.' To mark the occasion, Compassionate Communities East brought together members of our Palliative Care research group, St Nicholas Hospice Care, St Helena Hospice, and St Elizabeth Hospice to host a number of online events in collaboration with various organisations and inspiring individuals across the region to create a space for us to think about what it means to be in a good place to die. The facilitated events, mostly online, helped participants develop compassionate conversation skills, how to help grieving children as well as discover more about funeral directors and their important role in supporting those grieving. Compassionate Communities, supported by UEAHSCP, is a community-led initiative that encourages people to talk openly about improving services, approaches and support available for end-of-life care. Find out more about Dying Matters week here.
Image: Rebecca Goddard
Compassionate Communities are defined as “enhancing the activities of naturally occurring supportive networks combined with the wealth of community resources to be found in neighbourhoods, workplaces, educational institutions, or any place where people gather. Activating these communities can bring immense benefit to the people involved, both those receiving and giving support. Professional health and social care services can work in union and harmony with compassionate communities. If they do so, they will have an enormous resource which will help the people they serve in ways not possible for professional services alone.’ (from https://www.compassionatecommunitiesuk.co.uk/what-are-compassionate-communities).
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MBA Essentials Course Launched for Health Sector Professionals UEA Health and Social Care Partners have teamed up with colleagues at the Norwich Business School to deliver a new 100% online MBA Essentials for Health Sector Professionals 5-day Executive Education programme. To find out more and how to register, see the programme flyer on our website or email mbateam@uea.ac.uk The programme is suitable for experienced health and social care professionals: Senior/Executive managers, Clinical staff, Technical staff, Administration managers, Ward staff, Business managers, GPs, Dentists, Nurses, Practice managers, Caseworkers, Department and Functional managers, Paramedics, OPDs, OTs, Dental nurses, and beyond. The next cohort starts on 6 October 2021 and there are still places left.
CATCH UP ON THE LATEST WEBINARS Catch up on the latest webinars from our ImpACT research group and the Norwich Institute of Healthy Ageing. Our ImpACT research group’s new webinar series, Reinvigorating Health and Care Systems, explores COVID recovery and workforce transformation. Watch experts within the field discuss learning cultures and systems integration for sustainable person-centred practice. The series builds upon their previous series on the Venus Model for Person Centred Sustainable Transformation. Reinvigorating the System for COVID Recovery Finding Nemo: How to Lead and Facilitate Culture Change Can we Overcome Rhetoric and Address the Tensions of Workplace Wellbeing
Norwich Institute of Healthy Ageing's new series of monthly seminars features scientific and academic content from a broad spectrum of speakers across the areas of healthy ageing. Topics covered include dementia trends and prevention, more effective diabetes control, the benefits of intergenerational relationships and friends, the link between childhood nutrition and wellbeing, and more. Safety First – ageing well with diabetes Changing Minds about changing behaviour
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How can we work together? With an established network across health and social care organisations within Norfolk, Suffolk and North East Essex, UEAHSCP makes it easier for you to do more research and innovation with clinicians and health and social care professionals. The Partnership’s focus is on increasing collaboration to improve care and support to both service users and professional staff. Membership includes clinicians, academics, health and social care professionals, service user representatives and associates. Get in touch to see how we can work together ueahscp@uea.ac.uk.
Our Partners East of England Ambulance Service East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust James Paget University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Norfolk Community Health and Care NHS Trust NHS Ipswich and East Suffolk, NHS West Suffolk and NHS North East Essex Clinical Commissioning Groups NHS Norfolk and Waveney Clinical Commissioning Group Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Norfolk County Council Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust The Queen Elizabeth King’s Lynn NHS Foundation Trust University of East Anglia West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust
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