The team at Forest Close is working on a project which aims to make its care plans more inclusive and engaging.

This National Mental Health Act Quality Improvement project is being led by NHS England and focuses on making improvements in culture and practice to meet the aims of the Mental Health Act reforms.

For the team at Forest Close it’s all about making the care plans they use more engaging to service users, more individualised and more person-centred. This involves things like ensuring they consider a service user’s strengths and really tailor care plans to each person.

The project is also looking at how they can improve equity and inclusivity. For example the team has set up ‘equity huddles’, they are working to make sure a service user’s culture is fully considered when writing care plans, and are also looking to make sure literature at the service can be available in a person’s first language.

The service’s staff members have been coming together weekly since winning a competitive process to take on a quality improvement project in October, which the service applied for to make sure it looks to continuously improve its practice whenever possible.

A whole range of people from Forest Close are involved including occupational therapists, psychiatry and experts by experience. Service users and carers are at the heart of the project.

The team is being supported by weekly coaching led by the The PSC group and Virginia Mason Institute.

The project is set to run until February 2025 and is part of a broad cultural and transformational programme of work across SHSC. Other projects include anti-racism work, the patient and carer race equality framework, the triangle of care, culture of care, human rights work and least restrictive practice work.