Occupational Therapy News OTnews February 2020 | Page 8

NEWS
Top training award for colleague-led coaching service developed by
occupational therapist
A West Yorkshire coaching service that
has helped staff to support each other to
improve their services has won a major
national training award.
The Locala Coaching Service won
the Gold Award at the Training Journal
Awards. The service sees 22 colleagues
– all of whom are trained as coaches –
offer colleagues across the organisation
a safe and confidential space to explore
challenging situations and develop
strategies to help people find their own
way forward.
Jan Spencer was asked to set up the
coaching service two years ago at Locala,
Jan Spencer (far left) with coaches from the service and award presenter Jacqui Oakley (far right)
a not-for-profit social enterprise, which
delivers NHS community healthcare in
Kirklees, Calderdale and Bradford.
‘From a colleague-to-colleague point of view, everyone in the
She splits her role as a neurological occupational therapist
NHS knows we’re doing more with less and the only way to do
and an organisational development practitioner, and she says her
neurological background helped frame the organisation’s approach
of helping others to find their own solutions. ‘The best way to get
results with clients, particularly with brain injury, is using a coaching
approach that I’ve used for most of my career,’ she says.
Locala staff also uses coaching extensively with their clients.
Says Jan: ‘We use motivational coaching as people are much more
engaged in their rehab and get there quicker when they develop
their own solutions, so from the patient end you can only win.
that is by coaching colleagues, rather than command-and-tell as a
form of management to tackle complex problems.
‘The solution is always in people, whether they are colleagues
or patients.’
Jan says the award represents an endorsement of both
coaching approaches and social enterprises. ‘The judges look
at best practice nationally and for us to be up against huge
organisations like Barclays and accountancy firms with multi-
million pound turnover is real recognition of our work.’
Six occupational therapy projects in NHS Education for Scotland’s careers
fellows programme
NHS Education for Scotland’s AHP careers fellows have been
announced for 2020, including six occupational therapist projects.
The scheme funds AHP staff to participate in a learning
programme and lead and deliver a work-based project. They will
each work on their projects up to two and a half days a week over
the next year.
They include:
• Jane Allan and Susan Hart in Ayrshire and Arran, who will
evaluate the impact that early access to behavioural activation
has on the function and employability of people attending
employability services, as well as offering training to staff in
those agencies.
• Aileen Fyfe and Claire Muir in Ayrshire and Arran, who will
continue to develop work on offering services to people within
a primary care setting, focusing on the functional implications
of mental and physical ill health. The pair will also establish and
facilitate a network of occupational therapists across Scotland
looking to develop services within primary care.
• Patrick Gilmartin in the Forth Valley, who will develop a new
8 OTnews February 2020
social enterprise to offer a micro-business start-up programme
for people with complex barriers to paid work.
• Charis Scott in Shetland, who will build capacity in the
children’s occupational therapy department to meet the
rising numbers of request for children with autism and
neurodevelopmental difficulties. This will include co-production
approaches so families can offer peer support, as well as
self-management.
• Jennie Simcock in Greater Glasgow and Clyde, who will
investigate the most effective way of providing cognitive
rehabilitation interventions for people experiencing cancer‐
related cognitive changes and develop a clear pathway for
effectively delivering cognitive rehabilitation interventions.
• Gillian Trotter in Lanarkshire, who is developing her pilot project
No One Dies Alone to work with individual volunteers, families,
communities and staff to ensure that a person has a constant
companion in their last 72 hours of life.
This is the second cohort and they will start in April this year.
Read about the projects at: www.bit.do/NES-CF-2020.