QI 1189 Delivering Family Intervention (FI) Across Early Intervention in Psychosis Service

Abstract

Aim: To increase the number of families being offered family intervention (FI) by 30% and to increase the number of families receiving FI by 30% across the Early Intervention Service.

Family Intervention (FI) is an intervention that NICE state should be offered to all families on the Early Intervention (EI) caseload. CWPT’s offer of FI is BFT. The National Clinical Audit of Psychosis (NCAP) measures how well each service delivers this, historically we have scored poorly in comparison to other Trusts. We have previously trained staff in BFT, expected them to deliver this as part of their role, offered ad hoc supervision, put BFT leads into teams, and told staff they needed to provide BFT. These approaches did not improve our score. Using the learning from the North Warwickshire QI project which improved the uptake of BFT, a different approach has been tried. There is now a dedicated FI team and Clinical Lead. They have used QI methodology to understand where the barriers are for delivering BFT, used this information to create different approaches to deliver, worked with staff to challenge professional bias and change to the culture around FI and carers support. Numbers of families being offered BFT has increased across all the service but the number of families receiving BFT has not significantly increased. When it is being declined it is the families making an informed choice rather than staff making the decision on their behalf. The feedback is that BFT is being offered too early (within 12 weeks) therefore this is now being offered again later.