Digital Innovation of the Year 2020
At the 2020 Health and Wellbeing Awards the Digital Innovation Award went to Paul Woods from CGL Coventry.
When Covid restrictions started in March 2020 Paul very quickly transferred the service’s entire programme of group meetings onto MS Teams which could be accessed by Facebook and Whatsapp or by following a download link on a mobile phone. Service users, volunteers and members of staff were consulted and after a very short series of phone calls, online chats and meetings a whole new timetable was put together including a women’s group, various SMART groups, Peer support, Family groups and an innovative behavioural therapy group named Re-Wire.
The new Facebook pages allow service users to send anonymous private messages where staff members can quickly be made aware of any urgent treatment issues. All this – and the creation of private peer support groups on Facebook - has led to a huge increase in the number of people now engaging with CGL and is being considered for a possible national roll-out.
The judges were impressed with the speed of work, the inclusion of service users in ensuring sessions were run on accessible platforms and the innovative use of a good number of both social media and desktop IT applications.
Other examples of good practice highlighted included:
- A young people’s social media ‘takeover’ by Positive Choices. Young people promoted online topics of conversation and they also managed the responses to people posing questions.
- The introduction of ‘ChatHealth’ to help parents/carers to have quick and easy conversation by text with qualified health visitors. Being launched immediately before the COVID outbreak, ChatHealth quickly came into it’s own – receiving more than 350 messages in its second full month.
- New "What’s app" video consultations, breastfeeding ‘cafes’ through Zoom and a virtual fitness session for new mums to ensure people can continue to access support from SWFT’s infant feeding and stop smoking in pregnancy services.
Have you developed a Digital Innovation this year? Are you using technology in a new way that is having a positive impact on the people you are supporting? Are you using technology to improves outcomes for individuals? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you could be in contention for this year’s Digital Innovation Award? Don’t miss out on your chance to win, nominate yourself.
