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Aligning F2F and remote groups into one model of peer support

October 2020�Reason Digital and Deepr

Stroke Association

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Space for logo’s

  • Beth Scrimshaw, Sophia Costa - Stroke Association
  • Helen Stevenson & Jack Broadley - Reason Digital
  • Matt McStravick & Holly Mahoney - Deepr

Names of collaboration partners:

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  1. Original impact hypothesis
  2. Progress against outcomes and indicators
  3. Learnings that influence what happens next
  4. Learnings that influence the wider sector
  5. What next?
  6. Q&A

Contents

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Original Impact hypothesis

User needs statements:

As a stroke survivor with limited access and ability in using online tools

I need to access the information that was previously provided to me F2F

As a volunteer

I need to create activities/facilitate conversations that are accessible, engaging and support community building

“Creating new approaches to volunteer and support group engagement will;

  • Reach more members through more choice of groups
  • Enable people who are digitally excluded to access volunteer support”

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How we conducted research

Research type:

No. of participants:

Link/s:

Telephone Interviews

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https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_kocXzLw=/

Service Mapping Workshop

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https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_kocXzLw=/

Ideation workshop

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https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_kocXzLw=/

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Progress against outcomes and indicators

Progress:

  • 18 telephone interviews conducted
  • Challenge area explored in more detail

OUTCOME 1:

  • Deeper dive to understand the challenge area and how this is experienced by the different user groups (volunteers and beneficiaries)

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Challenge Themes Identified from Interviews

The challenge themes have been grouped according to whether groups met or not, and accessibility needs of volunteers and members.

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Access

Skills

Confidence

Didn’t meet as group

Facilitation

New members

Organisation

Did meet or communicate as a group

Motivation

Accessibility

Memory challenges

Fatigue

Aphasia

Digital Maturity

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Progress against outcomes and indicators

Progress:

  • 56 ideas generated by group during ideation
  • User led innovation identified during interviews

OUTCOME 2:

  • Identification of key opportunities for shared approaches, tools or infrastructure to engage remotely with users

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Innovation Example 1: Facilitation

Volunteers found facilitating online groups challenging, and at times completely exhausting!

One volunteer got in contact with InterAct Stroke Support. They are a charity that use professional actors to read to people in hospital recovering from a stroke. Following a stroke, stimulation through reading and conversation can encourage the brain to alter and adapt, making it easier to process and understand language and communication.

InterAct Stroke now send a volunteer to an online support group in the South, to facilitate group support sessions. As a result, the volunteer leader now feels like she can contribute to the session, and also receive support from the group instead of being focused on facilitating.

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Innovation Example 2: National Referrals

During lockdown, existing local in person groups took their sessions online. Not all groups set up remote ways of meetings, so some members weren’t able to attend their groups, despite having digital skills and appetite to join.

We’ve seen over lockdown that we can instantly meet with people all over the country (and the world!) at the click of a button. Geographical barriers no longer exist.

A group in the south of England was running a successful online choir. With some support from Stroke Association Volunteer and Community Officers, members from across the UK were connected with the choir to join.

What originally was a London based stroke choir now has members from Northern Ireland and the North East!

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Innovation Example 3: Mutual Aid Group

For members with no or low digital access or skills, engaging in online groups just wasn’t possible over the lockdown period. But innovation doesn’t have to mean using new technology - it can just mean doing something in a new way.

For one group in the north of England, they set up a Whatsapp group to communicate with members who could, and individual phone calls for those who couldn’t. .

Volunteers used the Whatsapp to coordinate a local stroke mutual aid group, and identified members that were shielding to drop food parcels and deliveries off to.

Whilst digital wasn’t used to directly support shielding members, it enabled the coordination between members to provide real practical support to members at the most challenging of times.

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Progress against outcomes and indicators

Progress:

  • Closer partnership with AbilityNet
  • InterAct Stroke
  • National Survivors Network

OUTCOME 3:

  • Identifying other relevant projects and partners this group, or the individual members, could connect to

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Progress against outcomes and indicators

Progress:

  • Any national charity that provides peer support groups at scale (Parkinson’s, MS Society, Cancer charities)

OUTCOME 4:

  • Identifying organisations that have a similar set of challenges and needs

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Progress against outcomes and indicators

Progress:

  • Referral and onboarding process
  • Facilitation training
  • Online peer support hub

OUTCOME 5:

  • Broadly scoping a Phase 2 piece of work.

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Learnings that influence what happens next

  • Inspiration for digital via storytelling
  • Develop list of facilitators, building more local and national partnerships in running groups
  • Scale up connection of online groups beyond localities
  • Promoting Ability Net wider to group network and what they offer for digital enablement
  • Training for online facilitation
  • Training for new activities online
  • Develop new digital volunteer role for groups (not to be confused with Ability Net)
  • Build portfolio of national groups - based on activity/characteristics
  • Enable an online hub for stroke groups
  • Supporting new members well into groups

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Learnings that influence the wider sector

  • Organisations need to go beyond providing guidance/documentation to use tools/software for remote meeting, and provide more opportunities to upskill on effective facilitation
  • Develop methods to gather examples of user led innovation, and ways to share with wider audiences
  • Don’t just consider how you can move services/groups/support offline to online. How can you reimagine brand new ways of providing services/groups/support?

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What next?

  • Closer partnership working with AbilityNet to support digitally excluded stroke survivors
  • Exploring potential of phase 2 briefs

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We’re still puzzled by...

Stroke peer support group member’s experience

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Key contact details: