Creating capable teams (NToW91)

Background
The creating capable teams approach (CCTA) has been used in the health sector under the new ways or working initiative to identify opportunities for workforce redesign.

In this pilot project, the approach was tested within social care teams to see if the process can support those teams that need to redesign to improve the services provided to people and carers.

Aims/Objectives
The aim of the project was to develop a process that could be used by social care teams to identify ways of working that can be introduced to better meet the needs of people and carers.

The objectives were to:

• Design and trial the CCTA
• Support the integration of 'new ways of working' and 'new roles' into the structures and practices of a multi-disciplinary team, within existing resources
• Support teams, in partnership with users and carers to review their services based on the skills and capabilities required to meet service user and carer needs
• Give teams the opportunity to be pro-active and directly involved in reviewing their workforce
• Produce a team profile and workforce plan that is owned by the team and which will feed into the organisation's workforce planning process

What happened?
The pilot involved two social care organisations. These were:

• Amber Trust, based in Belper which works with other agencies and organisations to support people with mental ill-health to live successfully in their local communities
• Amber Valley North Assessment Team (AVNAT), part of Derbyshire County Council Services.

The approach is based on a five-step process:

Step one - Preparation and ownership

Step two - Team function

Step three - Service user and carer needs

Step four - Creating a needs-led workforce

Step five - Implementation and review

 
These five steps were delivered through a series of meetings and workshops led by a facilitator with the support of the participant organisation, team leaders and the senior management team. The intention was to deliver the process over a period of four to six months, allowing a minimum of four weeks between each workshop.

Outcomes
During the delivery it became apparent that the approach was not a suitable model for AVNAT, however it was well suited to the development requirements of Amber Trust.

This shows that the CCTA is not always the right process for all teams and highlights the importance of step one of the process which when completed effectively will identify whether the approach is likely to be successful within a particular team.

Impact on workforce development and how you can use the learning
The CCTA process often generates many ideas and it is important that there is a process to record and explore these ideas and turn them into useful actions where appropriate. It is important that senior management buys in to the process so that the participants can feel confident that their recommendations will be considered.

There is a need for the CCTA process to be flexible to suit the needs of different organisations. The timescales involved and staff availability should be considered in order to make the approach workable for each organisation.

Additional material

NToW91 - Creating Capable Teams final report (pdf)

Back to plurality