Innovation

The Centre of Perfect Care are keen to support innovation that reflects the priorities for Mersey Care. If you have an idea that you think could lead to an improvement, there are a number of questions to consider to explore your idea further:

• Consider why your proposed idea is needed; What problems have you identified? Why is your proposal an improvement?
• Consider how your innovation idea reflects the strategic priorities of your division; have you discussed your idea with your team and the Divisional Managers? Is something similar happening in another part of the Trust? Does your management team support your idea?
• What is innovative about your idea? What evidence do you have to support this?
• Consider the change process; what would you like to do, when, and how will you set about doing it, how will you ensure that service users are part of the whole process?
• How will you measure the improvement? What are you going to measure, how, when, be specific, consider process and outcome measures
• Is there a cost implication for the Trust? Have you thought how this could be funded? Have you looked at internal funding?

Innovation improvements are important, however it is also important to ensure that innovation proposals reflect Mersey Care's strategic priorities and staff time and/or money is not invested in activities that will not provide.

Engagement and design thinking with service users and their family members is vital in all elements of innovation and improvement, as genuine co-production is often the difference between an innovation succeeding or failing. The whole design thinking process generates, tests and evaluates innovations before they become embedded into our service, the process often then produces original and creative innovations that may have not have been considered or designed if a traditional 'top down' method of design or improvement was implemented.