Ready to Act - A transformational plan for Children and young people, their parents, carers and families who require support from allied health professionals (AHPs)

3. Implementation and governance

Ready to Act is a transformational action plan for children and young people involved with AHP services that will require strong leadership for quality improvement and real partnership-working across agencies, strategically and in local communities. The AHP National Lead for Children and Young People will provide support and leadership nationally for implementation of the plan, with advocacy and facilitation around operational elements provided by a nominated AHP director.

Locally, AHP directors will be accountable for implementation of the plan, but it is expected that AHP children and young people’s leads will be given authority to drive forward activities for local implementation in partnership with stakeholders. The AHP Directors will be responsible for developing implementation plans in collaboration with AHP children and young people’s leads and reporting against improvement activity in relation to the five ambitions, answering the following questions.

• How are we doing?
• How do we know?
• What can we do differently to speed up implementation?

The AHP National Lead for Children and Young People will establish national implementation steering groups for specific workstreams, including:

• developing a national approach to requests for assistance
• establishing a national information/learning hub
• developing a national foundation AHP resource
• undertaking community mapping to support partnership-working
• reviewing and updating existing guidance on Partnership Working Between Allied Health Professions and Education.

The AHP Children and Young People’s Forum, in collaboration with the AHP National Lead for Children and Young People, will develop a clear national reporting and evaluation framework based on improvement methodology and including targets and timescales as appropriate to support local implementation and measurement and evidence change. The Forum will have a pivotal role in planning and supporting implementation nationally and locally.

Precise goals and targets relating to each ambition will emerge from this national and local planning structure. Local implementation planning groups will be established to take forward priority actions that will impact across AHP services for children and young people in Scotland, evidencing change in relation to improvements and outcomes. These groups will include representatives from health, education, social care, mental health, community planning partnerships, parents and AHP directors.

Successful delivery of improvements linked to ambition activity can only be achieved through successful partnership-working and collaboration across agencies and communities and, crucially, must involve children and young people, their parents, carers and families.

Local implementation plans will set out proposals to develop quality information/evidence of the impact of transformation on well-being outcomes for children and young people at all levels of service delivery.

Uni-professional networks for children and young people established in Scotland will be critical partners in developing implementation plans linked to the ambitions. They will provide essential profession-specific expertise, information and guidance on their unique contributions and are an invaluable resource in supporting profession-specific ambition activity.

National work being undertaken by the Scottish Government on operational measures and workforce/workload tool development for the allied health professions will inform the evidence base emerging in relation to the five ambitions.

Planned and consistent activity to educate and raise awareness in local communities about the ambitions and potential practice changes will be an essential prerequisite of implementation planning. This will have national direction but will allow for local flexibility, as determined by local population and demographic needs.

Emerging evidence of transformational change will influence new developments across services going forward to 2020. There will be a requirement for self-evaluation of practice and service provision to ensure high-quality collaborative service delivery. In addition, the collection of baseline data on current practice will be an essential starting point for all national and local activity relating to the plan.

We acknowledge that AHP children and young people’s services in Scotland are at different starting points and accept the requirement, as part of any implementation plan, to support practitioners through a commitment to training and development in collaboration with partners, and developing educational resources to support implementation of policy. This may include further support, training and awareness-raising in relation to GIRFEC and well-being indicators and collaboration to develop a shared understanding of well-being. We will also build on service experience and learning from current implementation of triage and universal and targeted supports.

This commitment to evidencing and reporting change will support quality and evidence-informed change across AHP services for children and young people in Scotland.