Ensuring accessibility
By this, we mean ensuring that your service provides options and takes into account the specific needs of those you wish to engage with.
For face-to-face groups this may mean ensuring they are run at a time, day and venue that is most convenient for the potential participants, that the venue has disabled access , and that local transport and car parking are available.
For virtual groups this may mean ensuring the slide set you are using is viewable to all, that links are sent in advance and instructions for joining are provided.
This could also mean meeting linguistic needs. And also in times when face-to-face groups are not possible, e.g. during a national pandemic, it could mean having to adapt your offer to patients to suit such as introducing telephone calls and pre-recorded sessions to ensure that all needs are met and no further health inequalities formed.
Using your PPI committee (How to Work with PPI) and considering the reports from any adaptation work carried out , gather as much information as you can to enable you/your team to make informed decisions about when and where to offer your diabetes education programme.
We recommend working with your local referring practices to ensure that for face-to-face groups venues chosen are easily accessible for their patients – In our feasibility work this was vital in engaging an elderly population in a rural village location. A venue was sourced at the local church hall and over the same six-month period from the previous year we saw a 293% increase in attendance compared to the previous year.
It is advisable that you/a member of your team go to all potential venues prior to booking:
To carry out a risk assessment to ensure they meet the health and safety standards as set out by your employing healthcare organisation – an example can be found here. This may or may not include pandemic precautions also, therefore please consult with your organisations health and safety first.
To carry out a reconnaissance of car parking and local transport facilitates
You may be able to carry out most of this online but, from experience, it is often best to check out the venues in person; this also helps with relationship building with the proprietors.
Be sure to include questions about the venue and timings of programmes in your participant evaluation form (Evaluating Your Programme); this way you can continue to gather information and justify any potential changes in the future. This is also useful information to include in your reports to your Commissioners and referring practices (Collect and Report Audit Data).
Age groups – one consideration that a number of organisations are being asked to make an extra effort to engage with is the 18-40 age range, primarily diabetes structured education programmes are suitable for all adults but often those from the age range report not feeling part of the general groups as the groups tend to have a much higher average age and the 18-40 year of olds struggle to identify with the other attendees. Therefore you may need to consider providing separate sessions for this age group, ensuring virtual groups are offered as these may be more attractive as well as MyDESMOND access. Consider the additional communications and promotional avenues that would be more appropriate to encourage engagement.