Case study: Making Every Contact Count (MECC). Implementing MECC in Local Authority Settings NIHR CLAHRC YH Theme: Public Health and Inequalities

March 2016

Contact: [email protected]

Impact Statement: Sheffield City Council (SCC) worked with CLAHRC to develop and implement the Making Every Contact Count, into a ‘Healthy Conversations’ initiative which includes a broader ‘social model’ of the MECC approach including the wider determinants of health and work within this programme. 204 staff from a number of diverse services have been trained to use Healthy Conversations, and the approach has supported outputs that are widely accessed by Council staff.

Background: A Learning and Development Consultant from within SCC was seconded into CLAHRC to support this implementation of MECC. Public health has been a core Council responsibility since April 2013 and the new Corporate Plan and Care Act put more emphasis on promoting wellbeing and helping people to be healthy and preventing ill health. The vision for the Council is to maximize all opportunities to support good health and wellbeing and “turn the council into a public health organisation”. As such SCC are developing an overall training offer to develop the confidence, commitment and competence of Council staff to support better health and wellbeing outcomes for staff and service customers. ‘Making Every Contact Count’ (MECC) is a long-term strategy that aims to create a healthier population who experience increased levels of wellbeing and a greater propensity to take control over their own health, wellbeing and general lifestyle choices. The resulting knock-on benefits of this will be a reduction in health and social care costs, along with an increase in social capital as a result of individuals feeling more empowered, able to use their personal power and of course, healthier. The MECC approach promotes individual behaviour and lifestyle change but the model has been expanded and adapted to fit into a local authority’s duty and settings. This shift towards a social model matches the development towards proactive prevention and becomes effective with greater involvement from the wider workforce. SCC renamed MECC to ‘Healthy Conversations’ and is currently rolling out this tailored programme across the city. Individual behaviour change is prominent in the ‘Healthy Conversations’ programme, but in working to a social model we have embedded the wider determinants of health and work within a person centred approach within this programme. This has been recognised in best practice documents as a MECC Plus approach. The basis for the course was the ‘Healthy Chat ‘format in existence since 2010 and developed in Stockport. It was adopted by the MECC development programme led by Yorkshire and Humber Public Health Workforce Advisory group. The course content and delivery were reviewed by the Sheffield Learning and Development Consultants with all public health leads for specific topics and updates and changes were made.

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Training started in June 2015. To date 204 members of staff from diverse services have been trained to use Healthy Conversations including: Community Support Workers, Social Workers, Care Managers, Occupational Therapists/Therapy Assistants, staff from City Wide Care Alarms, Older Persons Independent Living Sheltered Housing Wardens and staff from the libraries Home Hub. These wide ranging teams reach a diverse and often vulnerable population across Sheffield.

Next steps: MECC is being embedded onto the business of the council by :  Highlighting the organisations workforce development needs for follow on information and training, including additional bite size sessions on alcohol awareness and fuel poverty (see Pen portrait added value)  Fact sheets on health and wellbeing topics have been developed and are electronically accessible to council staff  The development of an e-package mandatory for all employees introducing public health messages entitled ‘Public Health is everyone’s business’  The development of a tear off advice sheet with key contacts to be available for workers to distribute to customers  The Inclusion of external partners and the potential to expand to the Independent, private and voluntary sector. The next level MECC coaching has being commissioned by the council for social workers. This training programme will provide a locally embedded, sustainable development framework and blended ‘Wellbeing Coaching Skills’ learning offer. This training will develop the role of social care employees; so that they in turn can empower customers to increase their own capacity to improve their wellbeing and independence. This will be achieved by developing skills and processes that promote well-being through positive conversations that achieve the aims outlined below. Historically there was a regional network for MECC which was no longer operational but this has now been resurrected by the consultants developing the MECC in Sheffield. The network meets regularly to share good practice and resources, has an information sharing hub and is now being supported by Public Health England. The Course was evaluated against Public Health England/Health Education England’s ‘Quality Marker Checklist For Training Resources’ with the majority of areas scoring fully met https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/495086/MECC_Traini ng_quality_marker_checklist_FINAL.pdf

How CLAHRC supports this project: CLAHRC YH has secured £99,000 cash match funding from Sheffield Hospitals Charitable Trust to recruit an experienced Sheffield City Council Grade 9 Learning and Development Consultant seconded from the Council’s Learning and Development Team. This member of staff is delivering the ‘Healthy Conversations’ Training to Sheffield City Council staff from the Communities portfolio, which employs 2,904 staff. The CLAHRC YH Public Health and Inequalities Theme Manager is working with the Learning and Development Consultant to undertake an evaluation of the ‘Healthy Conversations’ training programme at 0.5 WTE (match funding). Provided for i.e NIHR Annual Progress Report March 2016 The NIHR CLAHRC Yorkshire and Humber is a partnership between 31 organisations including NHS, Higher Education, Local Authorities, Charities, Industry and the Regional Innovation Hub. A full list is available on our website www.clahrcyh.nihr.ac.uk

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