Week 28: content crit, complexity and clarification

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Our content crit

We finally got round to putting our first content iteration of our webpage on best interests in front of staff this week. I always find these a bit daunting, but it was nice to hear some good feedback. Some insightful suggestions too.

One of the most interesting things that came up was that it was content that could potentially be used by staff to help support callers. Essentially acting as an internal knowledge base (except that it’s external).

Best interests: it’s complex

This content discovery into best interests decisions has been the most interesting I’ve been involved in. There are so many elements to it. We’ve had to explore not only the topic itself, but we’ve been sent on little side research projects like looking into healthcare mediation and how to navigate the Court of Protection.

Our research showed most people have a general understanding of what ‘best interests’ means. But we have a challenging task to try and communicate that the law has a particular definition, and how it’s applied can be quite confusing and surprising.

Research also highlighted that there seems to be a gap between what the law and professional guidance says should be happening and what people seem to be experiencing with best interests decision making.

We need to communicate that yes, the law around best interests decisions is clear in what should happen. But in practice it’s not always being followed by professionals (for a number of reasons).

We don’t want to give people unrealistic expectations as that helps no one. Not the people who will think they’re getting poor care, or the professionals who are struggling to provide good standard care through lack of training, time and other reasons.

Focusing on how to help people get better care

What we are focusing on is practical ways we can upskill people so that they can push for better decision making. In fact we’ve identified six things people can try to if someones’ wishes are not being respected:

  1. Check if a mental capacity assessment has been done
  2. Gather evidence of their wishes, feelings and values
  3. Ask for a best interests meeting
  4. Ask for a second opinion
  5. Get a third party to help resolve disagreements (mediation)
  6. Ask the Court of Protection to decide

We’re going to test whether the step-by-step pattern from the GOV.UK Design System might help present these options in a clear, sequential way.

Relentless clarification

I really liked this line I came across from Neil Williams’ blog:

Relentless clarification - just doing the thing you’d readily confide to a coach most needs doing I find stuff like this useful to think about in terms of my own work and figuring out how to do less, but better. How to decide what to focus on.

What I watched

Since my last post, I watched:

  1. A re-screening of Dune at the cinema - possibly my favourite sci-fi movie… a triumph of other wordly imagination.
  2. Big Trouble in Little China - a cult classic screened at the BFI. What a laugh.
  3. Winter 282 - a cool little documentary about Kevin Woods’ attempt to climb Scotland’s 282 Munros in a single winter season.
  4. Hamilton (for the second time) - sheer genius.
  5. Dune: Part Two - didn’t quite meet my high expectations, but still enjoyed.
  6. Beyond Utopia - a documentary about several families as they attempt to escape oppression in North Korea. Genuinely astonishing, shocking, bleak and uplifting. Please watch.