Q Lab Cymru – Providing expertise and creative, collaborative approaches to improvement, by Des Brown, Q Lab Cymru Programme Lead
Anyone who has wrestled with the knotty problem of ‘doing’ improvement may have often found that it is in sharing their view of the problem with others where breakthroughs and insights happen.
Sharing our challenges, sharing our thinking, sharing our learning, sharing our frustrations. Sharing what it is we do when we ‘do’ improvement and these are all ways ‘into’ those enlightening moments.
Q Lab Cymru has been designed to, amongst other things, create spaces for sharing and connecting people across organisations and sectors in Wales. Providing expertise in design thinking, and creative, collaborative approaches to change, for people who are tackling some of these knotty problems.
Q Lab Cymru is an initiative to improve health and care for people in Wales. It is a partnership between Improvement Cymru, the all-Wales improvement service for NHS Wales, and Q, a connected community of improvers across the UK and Ireland. Q Lab Cymru receives funding from the Health Foundation, an independent charity committed to bringing about better health and health care for people in the UK.
The Q Lab Cymru team have begun to create spaces for sharing, connecting, and collaborative learning via its current Virtual Workshop Series – ‘Exploring the improvement skills needed in recovery’ which is focussed on the concept of skills and attitudes for collaborative change.
A fundamental part of Q Lab Cymru’s approach is creating spaces for the voices, perspectives and experiences of those with lived experiences to inform how we collectively ‘do’ improvement. This approach has been designed into all aspects of the virtual workshop series.
Informed by these insights those that have taken part in the workshops have had the opportunity to consider what this may mean for their own improvement practice e.g. through the use of reflective practice activities and tools.
It’s worth noting that the intended audience for the virtual workshop series are improvers in Wales and others with an interest in improvement within the context of Wales.
Whether you have improvement in your job title or not, even if you don’t necessarily see yourself as an ‘improver’, if you’re involved in trying to deliver better services then this virtual workshop series is for you.
More information on the six part series and how you can engage in this collaborative and reflective space can be found here.
Looking beyond the virtual workshop series, the Q Lab Cymru team are developing some broader, cross sector, opportunities to support the health and care system in Wales. The team will share more details on these in due course.
In the meantime, if you would like to contact us with ideas on how we can support you, our details can be found here.