Minutes of the Meeting Held on 12Thjanuary 2016In Manchester

Minutes of the meeting held on 12thJanuary 2016in Manchester

Present:

Alex Winterbone Suffolk

Krys Jarvis Shropshire

Judith Ruddle North Tees & Hartlepool

Sarah SherwoodBedfordshire

Lara LittlerManchester

Jane CoatesManchester

Gill PackhamKent

Edwina LaytonDerbyshire

Yvonne BaronChorley, South Ribble & West Lancs

Maria SherringtonKnowsley

Amanda BallWirral

Francis BeavisGloucestershire

Samantha SterlingLeeds

Jane StroudGloucester

Janine EagleManchester

Steve BaxterDoncaster

Gareth EvertonHull CCG

Lynne PetersWigan

Christine WillansSouth Tees

Apologies

Tom HutchingsGreat Yarmouth & Waveney

Julia StellBolton

Sue CobbyEast Sussex

Caroline DesjardinsLeicester

Christine RiceSurrey

Mike WalkerRREMS

Ann DysonSussex

Angela CannonStoke on Trent

Henry LumleyBristol

Emma WakelingRoehampton

Jane SkillingtonCentral London

Julie CroysdaleLeicester

Margaret SwabyLincolnshire

Keith RobertsWales

Introductions

Minutes of the meeting on 13th October2015were agreed

Matters Arising

Whiz Kidz

Krys informed the meeting that Whiz Kidz would not be attending today but still wished to do so in the future. There has been a change of emphasis and they are to stop tendering for wheelchair services and are keen to build bridges with us, Agreed to invite them to the next meeting at Naidex, but also to invite other organisations that do similar thingsrelated to wheelchair skills training; please email Krys contact details if you have them.

Spinal Injuries Units

There has been a northern meeting relating to Southport unit but there has not been another national one. Yorkshire have invited all spinal injury units that they use to their next Therapists meeting. The national meeting aspiration was to have equipment ranges agreed nationally that services would be willing to fund - Krys has not heard anything more so you will get back in touch.

Website

Sponsored links – Sarah expecting a flurry of enquiries but none have been forthcoming Krys has been talking to Otto Bock who were interested.

The majority of the sites visitors are redirected from NHS choices so Ian is looking to change the landing page from the Directory to the Information Sheet.

Please update your details on the directory.

It was agreed to put a form in the minutes for people to start a wish list and ideas for companies who might be interested in sponsoring.

Naidex

All information is going through PMG but Krys has confirmed that we have a room for our meeting. Krys attended PMG training committee and it was agreed that we can’t manage 3 days with training, a stand etc. so we would do the 1st day which is professionals day, they agreed to dispense with a stand but instead put banners and flyers in the theatre area where we are doing the training.

Naidex suggesting that they get sponsorship for our training sessions and advertise the company sponsoring during the session - PMG committee was not keen on this idea and the Forum discussed and agreed that this was not appropriate.

Programme – Caroline willing to do her little black book again.

Judith willing to do her basic prescription session

Krys to do a session on Wheelchair Leadership Alliance

PMG to fill the rest of the day, finish at 4pm then put the You Tube videos on to fill the space.

It was suggested that we have our AGM in the auditorium Treasurer and Vice Chair for election. Agreed to e mail all wheelchair services and say we are having the AGM and inviting them to join us Ian can easily mail merge from the website if someone does a flyer Krys agreed to do that.

Further discussion points: Do we want to do it again next year?

Several people had been to The OT Show and were impressed would we like to get involved with that next year and maybe join forces with PMG again?

Competencies and Training

Not a lot has happened – Sue is in the process of trying to reformat them, Gill is going to approach Ireland who have already done a lot of work on competencies.

Link with PMG to provide training which covers any gaps in the competencies – who is using them, where are the gaps. Is anyone using the advanced level because you would expect that that might be where the gaps are. How are the competencies being measured, is there training being provided to meet the competencies. Is there any training to use the competencies – Gill and Sue are already in the process of producing some guidance on using the competencies.

Krys contacted Rebecca and Caroline to target undergraduate training with COT and CSP, Caroline has had a response which she will feed back next time

Wheelchair Leadership Alliance

Krys had checked whether pledge numbers have gone up but couldn’t tell if our communications helped. The Alliance is to continue till March under the provisos that the Alliance should reduce their lobbying and should engage with the current NHS England improvement programme regarding service specs etc. The group has asked for a current service spec as NHS England took it away and there has been no feedback since, no feedback on tariffs either.

Response to the mandate was really good but it still didn’t get into the mandate.

NHS England have held up Dorset as a centre of excellence but they are not well known.

A sub group of the alliance devised a self assessment toolkit that is rag rated, but Krys can’t find it on the website she will go back and find out what has happened to it.

The NWMF could take the service spec and run with it regardless of NHS England as we did with the standards. Krys will try and get a copy of the current draft; Krys feels that asking permission would be futile that we should just do it. It was an amalgamation of existing service specs anyway so they don’t own it. She will push the Alliance first but if they can’t do it are we happy to take it on? Yes.

Suggest that we combine with PMG to write to Ros Roughton stating that yet again it looks like the Alliance is going to fizzle out without producing anything positive despite all our best efforts. Agreed.

Copies of the mandate and NHS Constitution with highlighting of relevant sections to be sent round and go in the members area – from Krys

Standards are well thought of offer from the Alliance to endorse them also BHTA does everyone agree – suggest that when we have revised them we offer them for endorsement not change or discussion.

The “Establishing the Responsible Commissioner” document is out of date could some guidance be included in the service specification. Is this something we could all contribute issues to.

There has been some new guidance issued to CCG’s Gareth Everton will send round.

Now we have a lot more paid up members should we put the minutes and agendas on the members area and then only those who have paid can see them. It was agreed that AW will send these to Ian instead of general e mailing. Ian will reset password and then send to all those who have paid.

.Task & Finish Groups

Competencies – group have already fed back earlier

Membership – Sarah and Alex met and sorted out invoices payment etc.

Standards

The group have met and got about half way through revising the standrads and then split up the rest to work on and bring back. Krys has asked Simon Fielden to update the history part. Also asked Nathan Gray to update the Outcome Measures bit.

The meeting agreed to take a stab at adding a Capacity & Demand section. AW to send Krys the SALT tool she has. There was a discussion around various tools that are available and agreed to send Krys any that anyone has.

The aspiration was that we were going to launch at the AGM but capacity and demand is not going to be that quick to do – could we launch without that bit and then add in later. Agreed that this was possible.

ResMag update

There was no Resmag representative present to update the meeting.

The University of West of England course for RE to start in September if enough people apply. Fees £1850 per 120 credits need 240 credits.

Guidelines for lost or abused equipment

Agreed that we would review at this meeting. Changes made and will be sent round in draft.

Any Other Business

MND Association wheelchair consultation event – MNDA looking at a manual neurochair they have also partnered with University of Northampton to organise a focus group questions eg where do people go for wheelchairs? What does good look like? What is the pathway?Mostly about the pathway and what constitutes a good service. Going to write up a final document which will be presented as a research document

Also announced that there is to be some NICE guidance coming out in February which will include guidance on wheelchairs.

Nathan Bray – PhD Health Economist research on mobility and quality of life. The most cost effective way of providing mobility and independence to disabled people. Health related quality of life questionnaires. Asked Krys to support his application for funding she has done so. Wanting to roll out across the country –

Dr. Nathan Bray

B.Sc, M.Sc, Ph.D

Research Officer in Health Economics

Centre for Health Economics and Medicines Evaluation

Ardudwy Hall, Bangor University, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2PZ

Email:

Phone: 01248 382477; 07792670053

FOI bariatric chairs, what is a bariatric chair? General consensus over 25 stone.

It was suggested that we use Survey Monkey to ask all the questions we always ask as this will also collate the answers. Sarah to look into group log in.

Approved Repairers – Prisoners still registered with home GP, Healthcare to prisons is now commissioned regionally by NHS England. Some contractors will do repairs for free others charge

Out of Hours – please send any data or flowcharts you have on the use of an out of hours service to Krys.

Getting information from a 3rd party – how do you go about gaining consent. Could this be looked at with the standard – this is about following your own trust policy on consent. There followed a general debate about consent.

Specialist Controls – does anyone have any written guidelines?

Does anyone use telephone questionnaires pre power chair assessments, many did.

Date of next meetings:

26thApril Naidex

12th JulyShropshire

11th October Leeds