127 Optimising the family support service within GOSH

Background Family Support Officers (FSOs) are part of the GOSH Safeguarding Service. The team offers pragmatic and emotional support for children, families and carers to reduce the stressful experience of illness and staying in hospital. This might involve providing financial advice, advice about benefits, housing or liaising with local service to ensure that families get the support they need when a patient is discharged. However, this service often faces challenges related to accessibility, long waiting times (up to six months), resource allocation, local services cuts, and the ability to respond to an ever expanding and diverse range of support needs. This project aims to optimise the service provided by the FSO team so that they can support a larger number of families with the highest level of need.Methods Preliminary work with Safeguarding Service FSO and Senior Leadership Team (SLT) has included a mixed method, multidisciplinary approach including:Listening events: Root Cause Analysis of the problemsChange ideas sessionsDecision and prioritisation matrixProcess mapping of referral, triage and allocation pathwaysObservations carried out by the Quality Improvement team within the Safeguarding and FSO Duty desk area.Results We managed to uncover key bottlenecks, inefficiencies and gaps in the process, created shared understanding of problems within the FSOs and SLT. Baseline data have been collected on current process performance and opportunities for improvement have been identified, particularly around:Streamlining referral, triage and allocationAdapting a new unified team approachExamining and updating policies and proceduresEducating and empowering staff about the FSO service’s remits.Next Steps Next steps will focus on co-designing targeted interventions with stakeholders, piloting selected changes using PDSA cycles and evaluating their impact using agreed process and outcome measures.