ICATT Feedback Journey

My name is Duncan, I work as a support worker within ICATT (Intensive Community Assessment and Treatment Team within Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust). We offer short-term, intensive community support for adults with an intellectual disability who are experiencing an increase in challenging behaviour or decline in their mental health. We support individuals and their families/carers in the safest and most therapeutic environments for them. The ICATT aim is to be flexible to the needs of the individual and/or their key supporters, prevent placement breakdown and avoid or reduce admissions to hospital.

I started using Care Opinion about two years ago when I was asked to collect the team’s feedback during the Covid 19 lockdown to help review our service and to make additional contact with the people we worked with during a very difficult time. I started working with the Care Opinion team to ensure our service user group have a say in their care and how we can work with them to provide the best care we can.

It has grown from there to become a favourite part of my role.

Initially, to involve staff, I made a presentation to the team in our monthly staff meeting about how to use the Care Opinion website and the benefits of collecting feedback. In our Trust we have feedback champions who meet monthly and talk about the best ways to get feedback.

My own manager has started calling me the feedback guru!

ICATT has really embraced the process of collecting feedback, it’s a fantastic team so the feedback we do get is mostly positive and that helps us to keep doing the good work that we do. It is fair to say feedback has become important to the team.

We normally collect feedback just before or at the point of discharge so there is an agenda item in our daily morning meetings to highlight who is approaching discharge and should be contacted for feedback. The response that we get on Care Opinion about ICATT has been positive from the start but the way the team looks at it is there is no bad feedback and only ways to make ourselves better equipped to help. We have also developed an email signature with a QR code and a link to ICATT on Care Opinion.

In life sometimes the louder you shout the more you are heard but that can be hard for our service users. Outside of work I have seen this first hand and how true it is. I’m a father of a 7-year-old girl who has an intellectual disability. I have seen her playing in a playground or a soft play. The number of times she has been left playing at the side or coming back to sit with me because the other kids sometimes don’t understand the way she wants to play the game or what she is saying is horrible.

The work I have been doing with Care Opinion has given a voice to our clients, to talk about the care they are getting from us. It is so important to have your say in your care because it is something that involves you, not just people trying to do the best for you, the more you get heard the better it is. 

When I’m collecting feedback there are a few ways I like to do it.  We discuss what is most appropriate for the person and I may contact the person directly, their family or their care staff. I will try and make a time for me to see the person face- to -face if possible and often take an iPad with me to complete the feedback form online which makes it so much easier and quicker.

I use the Talking Mats function with some people who find this an easier way to communicate as it ensures they can say everything they want, or need to, without additional barriers. If they prefer to just talk to me and offer feedback this way, then I am happy to do that too.  I may type out the feedback for them and read it back to ensure they are happy. The Picture Tile functionality on the Care Opinion site is beneficial to the individuals using our service as it allows them to tell their story in pictures.

It may not always be possible to talk to the person directly, so I will contact the family or their care workers who have been involved in their care during ICATT input and collect feedback from their perspective.  The whole team has the QR code and the Invitation link on their emails so family or other professionals can do it at any time they want to.

It is often hard to catch someone at the right time to get feedback, but once I’ve contacted them and explained what Care Opinion is and how the feedback is used, they are usually quite happy to.

This is some feedback that was put on from a parent who got the Care Opinion information from our emails. 

I can’t thank the ICATT team enough!

Wow what an amazing, dedicated, and skilful service.

I think it shows how important it is that the families are listened to, and it is shown by the way ICATT responds to each post and thanks them for the feedback; and we do what we can to make our service better.

I hope that by continuing to use Care Opinion, it will continue to help our client’s voices be heard, and I hope someone does the same for my daughter.