FEATURE SERVICE DEVELOPMENT
Service development amidst a pandemic
Lauren Taylor and Karen Gill reflect on the new look Warwickshire Blue Badge service , which has had to find new ways of working to combat COVID-19 pressures
© GettyImages / richard johnson
The COVID-19 pandemic and first national
lockdown in 2020 impacted widely on all our services . At Warwickshire County Council , the occupational therapists working as expert assessors in the Blue Badge team saw applications reduce and all face-to-face assessments that were booked up until June 2020 cancelled .
As occupational therapists working in the Blue Badge team , we took this opportunity to evaluate our service and at the same time quickly implement changes to how we work .
We did this through three main phases , although at the time we had not envisaged that this would quickly develop into a very intricate service development project .
A new way of working In March 2020 , it was clear that we needed to quickly create a new way of working to ensure throughput continued and to avoid a potential backlog of work due to the lockdown .
The first phase involved looking at the number of assessments waiting to be screened via telephone to identify who needed to be seen face to face for an assessment and what decisions could be made over the telephone .
This gave us a baseline to help forecast potential application numbers for the foreseeable future from the first COVID-19 lockdown .
During the first pandemic lockdown , we saw applications for assessment reduce by approximately 60 per cent , which also gave some valuable time to evaluate how we work and identify improvements to help work on the backlog .
To ensure consistency , a format was needed to structure the conversation to assess by telephone , still ensuring we were equitable with the Department of Transport guidance ( DfT ) criteria .
The occupational therapists used their standard expert assessor assessment form as their framework , which focuses on the nine elements of the DfT criteria . This ensured we then had a solid evidence base for this new assessment style .
The telephone assessments involved asking the applicant to explain about a local journey or typical walk they take from their home . From this discussion , and using google maps , the occupational therapists were able to set the landmark distance and consider against this other information about walking ability .
This method enabled the occupational therapists to make some clear decisions for around 60 per cent of applications , which then meant that the waiting list reduced for face-to-face assessment .
An alternative assessment process Due to government restrictions face-to-face assessments could not be considered at this point .
22 OTnews January 2021