OTnews August 2020 | Page 20

FEATURE TECHNOLOGY
Stay In and Play In
How innovation and technology has helped a group of mums and
babies stay connected within the Northamptonshire Specialist
Perinatal Mental Health Team during COVID19 social restrictions
When social distancing was advised
back in March, it was clear that
the closure of social spaces was
imminent. As the week progressed,
the children’s centres used to run groups began to
close and the ‘Stay and Play’ groups that occupational
therapists Alex Stoddart and Madeline Warwick and
nursery nurses Kristina Childs and Rikhael Reid had
worked so hard to establish over the last six months
felt like they were about to slip from our grasp.
Once lockdown began we entered a monitoring
phase; the group facilitators began the task of
contacting each group member by telephone each
week to check in and offer support as an alternative to
the group session.
It quickly became apparent that multiple
conversations were being had about coping in
lockdown and also mums were constantly asking after
each other and their babies.
As a group of facilitators, it seemed obvious that
what they wanted was not to be monitored, but to find
a way of keeping connected and continue a sense of
normality in such uncertain times.
Getting digitally ready
One of the four priorities in AHPs into Action is
to embrace the use of technology to improve
health, care and wellbeing, while meeting
the quality, safety and efficiency
challenges the NHS faces.
Increased digital
capabilities have
transformed other
industries in the last
decade, so there had never been a better time to
realise the potential benefits for our service.
Within the first week of working remotely,
Northamptonshire Healthcare Foundation Trust had
installed Microsoft Teams, enabling us to make the
most of the opportunities digital capabilities can offer.
However, we hardly knew how to work it to speak
with each other, let alone facilitate a group using it. The
very thought of doing so with our perceived limited
technological skills was daunting to say the least, but it
was the only secure platform permitted by our trust for
groups, so it was all or nothing if we were to embark on
delivering remote care.
Over the following two weeks our goal was to
familiarise ourselves with the technology. With help
from various team members, family members, and
some willing and patient mums, we trialled various
mock sessions, enabling us to work out how to
connect them and find the size of groups that felt right
for us, as facilitators, and the mums we were aiming to
connect.
Mums who had joined other group platforms fed
back that they had already dropped out of groups
because group size was too big, which felt either
overwhelming, or the groups did not
meet their needs.
It was important when
setting up groups each week
that each facilitator used
the same process,
so we
produced a
flowchart
to follow,
20 OTnews August 2020
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