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What we do

 

As a result of 15 plus years of working in the field of mental health and personality disorder difficulties across criminal justice, health and the third sector, the team at Emerging Health are able to offer a variety of expertise to support the ongoing development of your organisation.

 

These include writing and delivering training, service development, team consultation, conference speaking and chairing, research and evaluation and group facilitation.

 

We are always open to discussing new projects and ideas too. Please contact us via the contact form for any further information/discussion.

 

The development and delivery of bespoke training-packages to meet organisational needs

Specialising in how to work with people with personality disorder difficulties (and sometimes for general mental health too) we work with organisations and teams to identify the knowledge and skills required to improve service delivery and staff confidence.

Co-production, working together equally, is central to the working ethos of Emerging Health.

A well evaluated and used method from working with many other organisations has been to

1. Meet with a range of staff and people with lived experience to find out what they need in the training to be of most benefit.

2. Develop a draft training package to meet identified need

3. Consult on the draft package and make changes as necessary

4. Deliver the pilot training, an Emerging Health staff member training alongside a staff member from the commissioning organisation, evaluating it after the pilot and making any changes if necessary

5. Train trainers-Train people from the commissioning organisation to deliver the training so that it is sustainable

6. Roll the training out with the assistance of Emerging Health staff if required.

7. Conduct a robust evaluation during and after the training

This model of training development has been used with e.g. several mental health trusts (329 staff trained in one trust), a prison, GP surgeries, third sector organisations and an organisation bringing an individual back from ‘out of area’. The model can be adapted to meet different organisations and different needs.

 

Service Development

Our team offer consultancy to work with organisations in the development of personality disorder (and general mental health) services and pathways.

We have experience in the following areas but are happy to discuss our involvement as required

• Designing a personality disorder services pathway both with provider and commissioning organisations

• Working with organisations on developing and procuring new mental health services, including presenting to a tender panel and being on a tender panel

• Working on a steering group to develop a new national initiative, across the South West, from scratch

• Developing involvement strategies for the people who use services and the staff

• Being a reflective ‘critical friend’ to organisations as they develop their services

 

Team consultation and facilitation

 

As experienced facilitators we can offer facilitation and consultancy to teams. We work with a team to help staff to listen to each other more effectively, reflect and work more effectively together in the future, particularly when supporting people with personality disorder difficulties.

 

A practised method for consultancy to teams has been to

• Have a preliminary visit to a service manager to gain an oversight of a team

• Visit team meetings for 6 consecutive weeks, observing and reflecting on team interactions

• At regular intervals in the meetings (to be agreed) intercede to share reflections, discuss observations and explore together ways of interacting

• At the end of each meeting summarise the reflections and look ahead to the next meeting

• At the end of the 6-week sessions summarise the work and record team working/future goals

 

Variances of this model can, of course, be discussed

 

Research and evaluation

 

Members of our team offer expertise in research and evaluation, particularly in the field of personality disorders.

We have experience of carrying out service evaluations, (particularly for services on the offender personality disorder pathway, OPDP), qualitative and quantitative research with people who use services and many other types of research and evaluation.

 

From the MSc, Iola and others can offer wide theoretical as well as practical knowledge in the field of personality disorders. One of Iola’s main areas of interest is ‘women and personality disorders in the criminal justice system’.

 

Group facilitation

 

Many of the activities the Emerging Health team are involved in necessitate the use of group facilitation skills. In much of the training developed by Emerging Health a facilitative approach is used rather than a teaching approach. This being in line with most of the research about ‘effective practice' in teaching and  learning about personality disorder difficulties.

 

The team can also offer group facilitation skills in isolation. Areas they have used these skills in the past have been

•  Facilitating a mixed focus group of prison staff and prisoners for evaluation purposes

• Facilitating staff ‘away days’ to build on and apply evaluations/research

• Facilitating prisoner and mental health service user meetings and focus groups

 

Conferences

We are experienced conference chairs, speakers and organisers.

Iola, in particular, has been a keynote speaker at many conferences and has chaired a number of large events e.g. http://www.swscn.org.uk/event/personality-disorder-conference/    Iola was the organiser, chair and speaker at this South West personality disorder conference in July 2015, for NHS England. The aim of the conference was to bring criminal justice, health and the third sector together to learn from each other.

Our involvement can be particularly useful for personality disorder conferences due to our knowledge and extensive networks.

 

KUF- Knowledge and Understanding Framework- National Personality disorder training

For the last 8 years Iola has also been managing the highly regarded, national personality disorder training, KUF, in the South West of England, on behalf of  NHS England (NHSE) and prison and probation service (HMPPS) Iola manages the budget, organises and delivers all types of KUF training, and organises and mentors 30 plus trainers (staff and lived experience trainers).

 

This ground-breaking national training programming has been the first of its kind to fully integrate knowledge, attitudes, thinking and skills, into a ‘psychologically informed ‘approach to training and working in criminal justice and health. It has also modelled working in partnership equally, each course being co-delivered by a professional who works in the field of personality disorders and a joint trainer who has lived experience of the difficulties. (Sometimes trainers come from both positions).

If you are interested in applying for a free 2-day OPD KUF training place (only for staff in the South West who work on the OPD or with offenders who have personality disorder difficulties) then please fill in the Emerging Health contact form.

The 2 day and 3-day KUF courses can also be purchased. Please see  https://kufpersonalitydisorder.org.uk/ and fill in the Emerging Health contact form.