For those Wheelchair Tango Foxtrot moments
WTF month notes: August 2023
Despite spending an inordinate amount of time with some very patient and tenacious IT engineers who spend hours every month making sure my secure, corporate laptop and my assistive technology play nicely together, I feel I have managed to achieve a few things over the past couple of weeks.
Digital Services for Integrated Care (DSIC) benefits map
Our benefits analyst and I have been compiling a benefits map for our area, Digital Services for Integrated Care. A benefits map is a diagram showing the cause-and-effect links (or at least correlation) between what we do and the aims and objectives of the directorate.
Following the NHS England benefits management policy, our benefit map contains:
· Drivers and objectives we contribute towards, such as improving patient health and well-being.
· Benefits (measurable improvements that our stakeholders see as valuable and which demonstrate our contribution to the objectives), such as improving value for money of primary care systems.
· Outcomes. These are the changes that we want to cause, such as primary care organisations taking advantage of better functionality.
· Work. These are the things we do to create outputs that can be used to generate outcomes. An example of work with the creating a practice data migration standard.
· Risks and assumptions — where things might not work as planned.
A map should be a tool for testing our logic, making sure we have covered everything (and are not including pet projects) and finding the risks, issues, assumptions and dependencies we need to manage carefully to ensure success.
Aspyre template
Aspyre is the project and programme tracking tool used by NHS England and, as a former NHS Digital directorate, we are migrating to the tool. Our Portfolio Management Office colleagues talked to several of us from Product Management. They explained the template we need to complete to get our Products into the system.
We had a number of discussions about milestones and benefits, tying into the benefits map work and what we can measure. As a result, we should have a more complete entry for September and can improve our reporting over the next few months.
Accessible documentation training
One of our User Researchers and I attended the half day NHS England accessibility training, focused on how we make our documents, presentations and internal communications accessible to the approximately 20% of our workforce who have some form of difference or accessiblity need. It was absolutely brilliant, so informative and well delivered.
Tips included using the accessibility checker built into Microsoft Office products and the Hemingway Editor, which analyses any text you paste into it. This can be anything, from an email to a business case. The Editor will highlight where your language or sentence structure is making your message more complicated than it needs to be.
(keen observers will have spotted that the Hemingway App isn’t fully accessible, of course).
I have created a Medium Blog about making your communication and documents accessible if you’re interested in more ideas on being accessible. We’re planning regular tips and tricks to send out each month to our teams, to help them gradually improve our accessibility and inclusivity.
Interviewing for my personal assistant
As a disabled person, the government’s Access to Work scheme funds adaptions that enable me to do my job. These have included software, such as Dragon voice recognition and equipment, such as a roller bar mouse.
NHS England doesn’t employ me for my ability to walk, or to type, they employ me for the knowledge and experience I have in creating high quality products and services that save lives.
As my condition has worsened during the pandemic, Access to Work have now suggested a part-time personal assistant. This week we finished recruiting my assistant. Eva will be my hands and my memory, working in the background so that I can do my job to the full.
Getting out and about
Part of hiring my personal assistant involved my first experience in a wheelchair accessible taxi! Dell and his young son, from Dell’s Taxis, were really friendly and helpful and very careful with my chair. As an ambulatory wheelchair user (i.e. someone who can get out of the chair if need be) I chose to sit on a seat rather than the chair. Dell was really knowledgeable and determined to make me comfortable, however I chose to travel.
I took a trip to one of the NHS England offices to meet the top candidates for the post. in order to enter the offices, I had to have a Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan (PEEP) for each office I visit. This includes making sure I have trained colleagues who can assist me to safely leave the building if an alarm goes off. It’s an important part of keeping me safe and NHS England definitely takes them seriously.
As part of this, I did a bit of an accessibility review of the building. I was really impressed with many of the facilities and was able to independently move around the building, use our meeting spaces and make a cuppa. Here’s me looking around the kitchen and desks, for instance. (I did check with estates before publishing the video).
Double Diamond Blog
As part of my effort to blend the personal and professional, I have recently published a blog post about using the double diamond to help me find my new electric wheelchair. The double diamond is an Agile, Human-centred design approach to problem-solving but can work in all kinds of settings!
Coming up:
This week I am off to Durham for the AGM of the charity of which I am a trustee. Building Self Belief works with children and young people in deprived circumstances to improve their well-being, resilience and engagement with education and their communities. It’s going to be an exciting and tiring week, planning our next steps as we expand rapidly, able to help more children and young people live up to their potential.
And finally…
Love how my mate was cheekily using my wheelchair’s cupholder to hold his beer. Mine’s a G&T 😉
