Project ECHO provides free online training to the local community of health and social care providers across Hull and East Yorkshire.
Working with the Humber, Coast and Vale Health and Care Partnership, in April 2020 Dove House Hospice launched the local Project ECHO by providing vital training to care home staff across Hull and East Yorkshire.
Following the COVID-19 outbreak, plans to engage with care homes and develop a syllabus of training was delayed but the team continued to engage with the care home community and soon joined the Hull and East Riding CCGs’ and the Councils’ emergency response to the pandemic.
By facilitating over 50 online training sessions, Project ECHO helped train 335 members of staff from 112 care homes in the safe use of PPE and how to keep their homes clean.
In August the Project ECHO team launched their first official training network: End of Life Care for Care Homes. A virtual coffee morning saw many local care homes gather together to learn what the project was about and how they could get involved. The training started on 8 September and ran on Tuesday afternoons over the next eight weeks.
The sessions featured presentations from multi-disciplinary professionals who specialise in end of life care. Care home were staff given access to professionals including consultants, Senior Sisters and social workers who happily shared their knowledge on a range of topics including recognising the signs of end of life, communication skills, comfort care, supporting families and bereavement.
As part of the sessions, care home staff also shared their stories through anonymised case studies and supported each other with their own experiences.
Over the eight weeks of training, 74 people attended the sessions and the feedback has been fantastic. The post-training survey has shown that 93% of respondents have changed their practice as a result of the training, and 100% feel more confident in their role.
As Covid-19 has once again become more prevalent across our community, Project ECHO is working with Hull and East Riding Infection Control team to train care home and domiciliary service staff in the safe use of PPE.
The Adult Social Care Winter Plan document states that every Care Home in Britain should have an Infection Control Champion who can lead on training within the home and be responsible for keeping standards high.
Project ECHO is now part of training these champions across Hull and East Yorkshire. The project is also hoping to create an online support community for these champions with monthly workshops for them to discuss any questions they might have and continue their learning in this never-more-vital subject.
Alongside this emergency response to the pandemic, plans are in place for future training networks on working with people with learning difficulties and supporting people living with dementia as well as re-running the end of life training in spring 2021.
Project ECHO is looking for Care Home staff to join a focus group to shape the training that is provided going forward, so if you are interested in putting together a curriculum and influencing the future of Care Home training in Hull and East Yorkshire, get in touch.
The ethos of Project ECHO is to ‘move knowledge not people’ and the Covid pandemic has shown how vital this approach is.
Not only does the virtual training save care homes money in travel expenses and not having to release members of staff for the day, but all this knowledge is shared in just 90 minutes a week to staff within their care homes who can all learn together.
For more information on Project ECHO and to get involved in either the focus group or future training, you can contact the team at echo@dovehouse.org.uk
