Relaying of Learning in Autism and Intellectual Disability Services - COVID-19 (RELAIDS)
The aim of this project was to explore how services have changed to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic as well as understand how services have continued to support people during the lockdowns and with all the rules that the government has put in place. This project was supported by Dr Phil Elliott (Senior Research Facilitator, Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust). Presentations of the project was delivered in a number of forums including the North West Confirm and Challenge Group, the Regional Families and Experts by Experience National Campaigns Group, the Acute Hospitals Network and the NW ODN to encourage widespread submission of ideas and actions undertaken during COVID-19 by services. All Directors of Nursing across the NW ODN footprint were also written to by the chair of the ODN to encourage collation and submission of returns across local services.
The project leads were successful in obtaining a wide-ranging collation of returns from across the North West for services and Teams delivering support for people with a Learning Disability and/or Autism in line with the project objectives. This was a particular challenge in practice, due to a further national surge in COVID numbers and services remaining under significant pressures to deliver core provision.
An initial thematic analysis of returns was conducted in January/February 2022 by two independent task-finish groups and findings integrated through a second-round review by the project leads alongside an Assistant Psychologist .Preliminary findings were presented at a National Conference in London in March 2022 and to the ODN in April 2022.
The working group is currently in the process of providing a clear narrative to describe the range of themes, sub-themes, and sub-sub-themes observed within the final set of data returns. This is with the intention of producing a summary research article of publishable quality. The intention is to complete a first draft of the thematic interpretation and summary of findings by end-August 2022 with a full draft manuscript completed by October 2022, with the intention of a final manuscript to be submitted by November 2022. Continued revisions where required will be pursued to support publication of these findings on behalf of the ODN.
The current leads for the RELAIDS project believe that there may be future scope to build on the work undertaken here to review other aspects of service delivery/change.