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14/08/09
Michael Rosen, ex-Children's Poet Laureate in the UK, has agreed that his commissioned poem about the NHS "These are the Hands" can join the "Poems for..." collection and be translated into different languages.
25/02/09
Hyphen-21 backs proposal for a code of professional practice for service user consultation.
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| User Involvement in Staff Recruitement - how to test for relationship skills |
The quality of services delivered by any Health or Social Care organisation relies crucially on the quality of its recruitment. Good staff is where good practice comes from.
Astonishing, then, how crude and hasty the usual interview process for care staff at all levels can often be, and how superficial is the recruitment training of many care service managers.
A skill always central to the work of clinicians and ground level care staff and now increasingly central to the work of senior managers of care services, is the ability to relate well to users of the services. Relationship skills. The skills that make humanity.
But how, in an Equal Opportunities interview, do you test for relationship skills ? By asking each candidate to describe a case history with a happy ending ? What does that tell you ?
A more meaningful way is to deploy a secondary recruitment panel of service users. Their interview assesses candidates, not just on their answers to the questions asked, but on the way they answer, the manner with which they relate to the questioners, through their answers.
Clearly, assessment of the quality of candidates' relating to the users on the panel cannot be done by quantification, by counting numbers. But it must be done methodically. This is made possible by reference to a list of characteristics and behaviours that have been proven beneficial in care workers (see Truax and Carkhuff attached.)
After the interviews, the user panel refer to this list in evaluating their responses to the behaviour of each candidate. An observer from the primary panel which has final responsibility for the selection decision, is also present to add his/her external observations to the more immediate impressions of the user panel. The two responses are brought together and taken to the primary panel as additional material for its final decision.
Potentially, here is a potent resource to help ensure the wrong staff do not enter the Care Services. But to be effective it will need to have a real influence on the final recruitment decision, a weighting clearly established and agreed beforehand. Thus, if relationship skills are agreed as an Essential Selection Criterion, and the user panel is agreed as the best means of assessing these, then a strong message of concern from the users in any particular case must result in no appointment in that case. At the same time, before agreeing to this, it is entirely reasonable that the main panel should be able to trust absolutely the user panel's methodology and consistency of judgement. Therefore the user panel Chair must have credibility ; the panel members must have solid training.
The model is practiced in Westminster, and user group members take part in interviewing all senior management staff, as well as all psychiatrists.
Obviously, some professionals will balk at the idea of being interviewed by people who might end up as their patients, or might once been their patients. Will the interview be used to settle scores ? Can it be trusted ? The answer is that, properly conducted, here is more than just a way of involving users in the recruitment of care staff - here, simply, is a better and more refined way of interviewing. It can strengthen the filtering process by which the care services keep out unsuitable staff. These are rare but, once in, they do damage to vulnerable people. It is in everyone's interest to do everything possible to ensure they do not find a way in.
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The Commision for Health Improvement
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The Commision for Helath Improvment (CHI)has commended Hyphen-21's model for user involvement in staff recruitment as:
“...worthy of sharing within the Trust and, more widely, across the NHS”
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Open Mind Article
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An article published in the magazine “Open Mind” on this subject
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| File size: 348k |
Click here |
| Truax and Carkhuf Attributes |
A list of staff attributes proven by research to be essential core skills - a measure for interview assessment.
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| File size: 10k |
Click here |
Course on Service User Involvement
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The record of a recent course on service user involvement in interviewing.
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File size: 77k
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Click here |
Protocol for Implementation
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A protocol on how to institute the model into an organisation.
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| File size: 19k |
Click here |
 to view PDFs |