Category Archives: Filming

Connecting People on Film

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The NIHR School for Social Care Research has funded the creation of short films to accompany training materials for the Connecting People Intervention.

The films have been created by Trafford Community TV, a social enterprise spun-off from the Trafford well-being centre blueSCI who are participating in the Connecting People Study.

The films have been developed to assist training sessions about the Connecting People Intervention model. They feature practitioners talking about aspects of their practice within the context of the model. The different opinions expressed by them are certain to provoke discussion in training sessions when workers explore what they think about the practice involved in supporting people to develop or maintain their social connections.

All the films can be viewed via the menus on this website.

An introduction to the films can be found by clicking ‘training‘ in the menu above.

Drop-down menus from this link take you to the following 12 pages:

Question 1. How should I view the person that I am working with?

Question 2. How can I manage boundaries with an individual?

Question 3.How can I keep building on my own community knowledge?

Question 4. How do I overcome barriers faced by working in this way?

Question 5. How do I identify in what areas I can best help an individual?

Question 6. How can I get someone to try something new?

Question 7. How can I help someone to move on?

Question 8. How can I link an individual to someone new?

Question 9. How can I help the individual to overcome barriers?

Question 10. What kind of environment works best?

Question 11. How does this fit with our existing practice?

Question 12. How can our agency form better links with our community?

Each page has a short film and a PDF document with some suggested exercises for use in the training session. They can be used in sequence or dipped in to as required.

Additionally, we created videos, animations and case studies to illustrate what the Connecting People model is all about. These can be accessed via ‘the model‘ link in the above menu. For example, the film below features workers talking about their thoughts about the model:

Finally, the research team talk through what the model is all about:

Click this image to watch the connecting people intervention model

Click image above to watch the Connecting People Intervention model video

We are keen to hear what you think about the films. Please leave us a comment to let us know what you think about them.

Social work perspectives on Connecting People

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Earlier this year the Connecting People study team successfully obtained an additional grant from the NIHR School for Social Care Research (who are funding the study) to produce training materials and short films about the Connecting People intervention model. The films and training package will be made available on the this website in the early autumn for anyone to use.

In the course of the filming, we have captured the perspectives of practitioners and service users about how the Connecting People intervention process works and what its outcomes are. We are finding out more about this in the study itself, but the films vividly capture individuals’ experiences of the impact of the model on their work and lives. The first of these films will be uploaded shortly to YouTube as a taster of what’s to come.

Anticipating the release of these film clips, The College of Social Work interviewed Rob Goemans (Professional Social Work Lead) and Jackie Stallard (Mental Health Social Worker) for the July edition of their online magazine Social Work Matters. Rob and Jackie both work for the Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust where they are piloting the Connecting People intervention model.

Rob described Connecting People as “more than just an intervention. It’s an overall framework of how social workers, other professionals and services work with people with mental health needs”. He went on to speak about his hopes for the model in providing an overarching framework for mental health social work backed up by research evidence.

Jackie spoke about how the model provides hope to mental health social workers who, in many places, have become disillusioned by mental health trusts obsessed with targets and squeezing out social perspectives. “My priority is the person I’m working with and helping them achieve the best quality of life they can,” she said.

The full article and clips from the interview can be viewed online in Social Work Matters (flash is required).

Alternatively, a PDF version of the magazine can be downloaded here.

SWMatters

Social Work Matters is a magazine for members of The College of Social Work, but is reproduced here with the kind permission of its editor, Mark Ivory.

Lights, Camera, Action! Connecting People Study Filming

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cameraSince finishing travelling the length and breadth of England to deliver training to the agencies participating in the pilot of the Connecting People Study, the team have been discussing how to ensure that all of the knowledge that we learnt whilst doing this training was captured and did not go to waste.  We have had so many valuable discussions with workers and individuals from many different perspectives that we wanted to find a way to encapsulate this knowledge effectively.  We also wanted to ensure that other agencies and organisations could benefit from working using the Connecting People Intervention, without us going to train them personally.

We were recently successful with an application for an additional modest grant from the NIHR School for Social Care Research to help us take this work forward. The grant will enable us to create a training package encompassing video footage of the Connecting People Intervention in action, as well as training activities to allow an agency to train itself independently, which will be documented in a training manual

We have teamed up with Old Trafford Community TV to create the videos for the training package. Filming started at our   London Connecting People event in February, where we captured the views of workers both new to the model and already working within the pilot sites.  There were lots of really useful sound-bites and clips from the panel discussion, interviews afterwards, and the training sessions that we will be incorporating into the training package.

The next step is to travel between various agencies engaged with the pilot study and record footage of their practice as examples of the model in practice. This will range from tours of their facilities and interviews with managers about business issues to chats with individual and worker partnerships about their experiences, and footage of the stages of the model in action.  We are also looking to run another training day to help boost one lucky agency’s knowledge of the model, and capturing some of the harder to describe training exercises on camera.  In addition, animated case studies, presentations of the research and policy background of the intervention, and a detailed explanation of the model will all be included.

The aim is to create a package that can be viewed as short, standalone videos that demonstrate certain aspects of the model; but can also be used as a whole (along with training activities) to allow an agency to start training from scratch.  By adding in all of these elements we hope to produce something dynamic and impactful, which will fit with written training materials and the Practice Guidance to give the full picture of the Connecting People Intervention.

If you have any ideas of things that you would like to see included in this training package, please contact us on cpis@gmail.com