Sustainability and Spread
There are many change initiatives within both health and social care all aiming to find ways to improve care and service delivery for users of the service and their families and carers. A Collaborative programme is one such improvement initiative, however, there are a number of key elements within the Collaborative approach that make it different from other change programmes.- Firstly, the focus on learning from all the hundreds of improvement projects that have taken place to date, building upon, adapting and adopting what has worked well elsewhere and not reinventing the wheel.
- Secondly, recognition that a Collaborative is not a 'project' as such, but is ultimately about developing an 'improvement culture' within and across organisations.
The ability to maintain Collaborative improvements in the longer term and share them with colleagues is referred to as sustainability and spread.
Sustainability can be described as:
When new ways of working and improved outcomes become the norm (ie. part of the mainstream rather than something added on) and not only have the process and outcome changed, but the thinking and attitudes behind them are fundamentally altered and the systems around them are transformed in support.Spread can be described as:
The extent to which learning and change principles have been actively shared with and adopted by other parts of the organisation or service.Further information about sustainability and spread can be found in the NHS Modernisation Agency Improvement Leaders Guide to Sustainability and Spread.
