people before process

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Using CAREFUL with teams, departments and small organisations

All of the 28 CAREFUL elements can be use or adapted for use in a single department or a smaller organisation such as a GP surgery or community team.

Here are some initial steps for you to consider if you want to use the CAREFUL approach in a small organisation:

  1. The first document you should review - preferably with with your fellow team leaders - is the CAREFUL organisation diagram and concept note.
  2. Again with your fellow team leaders, you should spend an hour answering the questions in  the organisational questionnaire and ensure you have given yourselves an overall CAREFUL score.
  3. Next, ask all your staff members to answer the Cultural Questionnaire anonymously and collate the results. This will give you and your leadership colleagues a more exact idea  idea of where you need to focus your efforts. YOu may also want to set-up a more regular Staff Barometer to supplement this and monitor progress.
  4. You will now need to select the 28 elements you wish to implement, and the rough order in which you want to implement them. We would strongly recommend that you include - and start with - the elements in PRELIMINARIES
  5. To manage your CAREFUL implementation, you will need to appoint a delivery team. The size and complexity of your organisation will dictate who is in this team. Whoever they are, we would urge you to ensure they familiarise themselves with the ACTIVE documentation before they start.

Remember that instead of implementing all 28 elements, you may want to select only a sub-set of these. We have suggested some such solutions (Patient Experience, Staff Experience, Leadership Development, Decision Making, Reputation, and Efficiency), but you can - and should - adapt the programme to your own needs.

Finally, we would suggests you use the Departmental Checklist below, to keep track - in your own mind - of where you are against the CAREFUL ideal. You might also want to use it as a high-level discussion document with your CAREFUL team.

Useful Documents

CAREFUL Departmental Checklist.pdf
File Size: 96 kb
File Type: pdf
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Getting help

We offer direct coaching and longer-term partnerships to help with the implementation of the CAREFUL programme both with smaller teams and with larger organisations. 

For an outline of our work with teams, please see the PDF file below, or use the contact form to get in touch with us.

The CAREFUL team
File Size: 262 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

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