October Outcomes : Getting Better Everyday

We’ve said it before and we’ll likely say it again; Delamere is an organisation with a very strong ‘why’.  We exist simply to help guests achieve positive outcomes.

Anecdotal feedback and testimonials about what we do here at Delamere, and crucially what our guests achieve, is powerful. It motivates our colleagues and gives prospective guests a sense of what to expect and allows them to hear first-hand how we’ve helped others who’ve been going through something similar. 

The team here, many of whom themselves have lived experience of addiction and recovery, have the great privilege of helping guests Grow Beyond Addiction. For colleagues here this work is a calling, a vocation and often a very rewarding one at that. We love success and we insist on celebrating recovery and how lives can change as the result of a decision, some courage and the right help and support.

Attraction, rather than promotion, and the therapeutic value of one inspiring or helping another – as well as the bond and identification found in group therapy, all very much have their place.   

Being in active addiction is a lonely isolating experience and much comfort is found and much shame is shed in meeting others who have suffered and recovered.

In many ways, we’re only as good as our last outcome, here and whilst we’re proud of our success to date and the outcomes we’ve achieved so far, it’s fair to say there’s a restlessness about our approach. Our focus and energy is on getting better everyday.

If you can’t measure it, you can’t change it and to this end the ‘science bit’ matters here too. 

As we develop and grow Delamere, with the vision being firmly fixed on outcomes, we’ve bolstered our team with bigger brains than mine, in order to arrive at meaningful data and really understand what we can improve here in order to positively impact on outcomes. 

Dr Terry Spokes, for instance, joined us 4 months ago now and part of what he and Professor Sir Cary Cooper help us with is tracking, improving and publishing outcomes.

We collect data from various sources. This often gives us the best clues in terms of how we can get better every day. Feedback from guests, colleagues and family members, more than anything, drives how we operate Delamere, how we finesse our treatment approach and how we drive constant improvements.  

If we can change or improve something in order to positively impact on outcomes, we do.

Data can be a bit dry, so yesterday some of the team here gathered and shot a little video in which they relay some of our effectiveness and outcomes statistics from October 2021. 

If you’re interested in the science – what we track and how we track it, keep reading or give us a call (we’re starting to love data). 

For the headlines and to see some of our amazing colleagues relay how we’ve been getting on, check out our video above.

Tracking effectiveness and Outcomes of the Delamere Model 

Treatment effectiveness is monitored in various ways and with support from our Outcomes Director Dr Terry Spokes and our Advisory Board Member Professor Sir Cary Cooper. One tool we use is based on the outcome data from the Guest Outcomes Survey and the Guest Satisfaction survey. 

This information is being used to monitor effectiveness in line with Care Quality Commission key lines of enquiry (KLOE) and specifically in accordance with the CQC (2014) document ‘A Fresh Start for the Regulation and Inspection of Substance Misuse’.  

At discharge from the service, for instance, we consider 5 key areas and below we explain why and how they relate to regulation.

Key Line Of Enquiry (KLOE) 1. Promoting recovery, and good mental and physical health.

On a scale of 0-5 (not present – extreme), how do guests rate items in the promoting recovery and good mental/physical health index as between 0-1 out of 5 at discharge. 

KLOE 2. Promoting positive relationships

On a scale of 0-5 (none – extreme), how do guests rate items in the promoting positive relationships index as 4-5 out of 5 at discharge. 

KLOE 3. Building on recovery capital (supporting people to build and maintain their own recovery).

On a scale of 0-5 (none – extreme and poor-excellent), how do guests rate items in the recovery capital index as between 4-5 out of 5 at discharge. 

KLOE 4. Ensuring that people have a positive experience of treatment and feel included and involved in their recovery plan.

On a scale of 0-5 (poor – excellent), how do guests rate the items in the experience of treatment and inclusion in their recovery plan index as between 4-5 (very good – excellent) out of 5 at discharge. 

KLOE 5. Ensuring staff are appropriately trained and supported.

On a scale of 0-5 (poor – excellent), how do guests rate items in the colleague competency index as between 4-5 (very good – excellent) out of 5 at discharge. 

Bit dry?  Here’s some of the specifics we ask:

• The level of anxiety, depression and cravings to use experienced by guests on completion and at periods post discharge.  
• A guest’s ability to share in a group setting and their insight into resources they can continue to access in order to protect and maintain their abstinence.  
• The extent to which guests felt they were educated by our programme around substance abuse and preventing a return to active addiction. 
• Whether or not they had opportunity to give input into their treatment plan here at Delamere and whether they worked on the issues identified as being important. 
• We ask guests about whether a continuing care plan was formed specifically to suit their needs, whether they would recommend our programme and whether they felt safe here. 
• We survey the extent to which all guests felt their needs were understood by colleagues, whether their focal psychotherapist was knowledgeable and skilful and invite them to rate their experience of the nursing team and recovery teams.

What we then do with the findings makes the biggest impact, of course. It is this activity that we drives change, growth and progress.  Learnings might mean we revisit a module in our treatment programme, for instance. It could prompt us to introduce a tracking tool to measure anxiety, or as is in our project funnel at the moment we are choosing to further develop our family and friends’ connection day programme.  

Delamere hasn’t been a case of build it and they’ll come. 

More than anything, it’s a journey which is about listening, understanding, and growing.

Thankfully our team are very good at that, it seems. 100% of guests rated our colleagues in October as excellent. 

About the author: Martin Preston

Martin created Delamere in order to provide exemplary care in first class facilities. Find out more about Martin on our team page.