Photo by Khurt Williams

A very warm spring welcome to the COPE Project update!

As we turn to a new season, we thought we would do a little spring clean of our monthly updates. Apart from COPE Project news, we are also introducing within these updates blog posts, where members of Team COPE will share some new research, updates in practice and other news or reflections that are relevant to the project. This month we report on a Twitter chat focussing on experiences of care, as well as the notable reduction in health visiting and school nursing staff.

#ExpOfCare Twitter chat, hosted by @KathEvans2
Experience of Care week took place on 20th-24th March, and during this week many took to Twitter to discuss their experiences of care. Hosted by @KathEvans2, there was considerable talk across various parts of the health care sector, including midwifery and health visiting/maternal and child health. Some of the highlights of this chat included placing an emphasis on asking people ‘what matters to you’ and listening to service users, ensuring that staff are also looked after, and most importantly, acknowledging the value of good communication and applying this in day-to-day practice. The issues raised in this chat echo current research, for example, in our review we found that for midwives and health visitors, an enabler of collaborative work is good communication. Equally, poor communication is a challenge to working collaboratively. Contributors to the #ExpOfCare chat underlined the value of not just communication between professionals, but also with service users. Indeed, this is also something that we have gleaned from our conversations with mothers as well as health professionals.

Did any of you participate in #ExpOfCare? Let us know in the comments below.
You can read more about this event here.

COPE News/Notices

We have some exciting news regarding recent funding. We were recently successful in our application to our School of Health Sciences for funding to organise a half-day of showcasing our findings so far. We will also discuss our current projects and ask for feedback on how they can be tailored to the current practice environment. This day will be held in June. If you are interested in attending, please email cope@city.ac.uk

In addition, the University has awarded us money to develop and run training aimed at helping healthcare professionals work together to provide women continuity of care during and after pregnancy. This project will start in the next few months and will be open to London-based healthcare professionals. We will share more information on this as we develop the workshops.

As ever, we would love to hear from you! Let us know what you think of the changes we have made to our monthly updates, or ask us any questions regarding the COPE project via cope@city.ac.uk.

Until then,
– Team COPE

Hello and welcome to the March news update!

We are delighted to inform you that we are making great progress on data analysis for the midwife/health visitor interview study. Thank you once again to everyone who has participated, or shared information with others about this study! In total we have 32 interviews, amounting to over 28 hours, as part of our dataset.

As we mentioned in our previous updates, we have begun running workshops for midwives, health visitors and other healthcare professionals women may meet during and after pregnancy. A further two workshops were conducted this month. We are of course evaluating these workshops and more information on this will be available in future updates. This project is funded by the Community Education Providers Network (Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest).

Finally, we are also busy with analysing the data from the women’s interview study. Again, thank you all for your support on this work! More information will be available in the near future.

If you would like more information or have any questions about any of these studies please email cope@city.ac.uk.

-Team COPE

Hello and welcome to the February news update!

First, a notice for those who are following our midwife/health visitor interview study. The recruitment and data collection for this study is now closed. Thank you to everyone who has participated, or shared information with others about this study.

Second, some news! In mid-January we started running workshops for midwives, health visitors and other healthcare professionals women may meet during and after pregnancy. So far, we have held two workshops, with two more in February. We are of course evaluating these workshops and more information on this will be available in future updates. This project is funded by the Community Education Providers Network (Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest).

Data analysis is well underway for the midwife/interview study. We are also busy with analysing the data from the women’s interview study. Again, thank you all for your support on this work! , More information will be available in the near future.

If you would like more information or have any questions about any of these studies please email cope@city.ac.uk.

-Team COPE

Happy New Year to all of you!

It has been such an exciting and productive year and we are eager to share some of the highlights of the COPE Project at the end of 2016 before we announce some of our plans for the new year.

At the end of November, we had a parent advisory group meeting (Twitter: @City_CMCHRAdGrp), where we discussed the health professionals that women encounter throughout pregnancy and after birth. Thank you very much to those who attended the meeting and contributed their views. If you are interested in attending one of our future meetings, please make sure to follow us on Facebook or Twitter, or contact Dr Ellinor Olander (ellinor.olander@city.ac.uk).

At the beginning of December, Dr Ellinor Olander presented findings from the new mothers’ views of continuity of care received from midwives and health visitors at the UK Society for Behavioural Medicine Annual General Meeting in Cardiff, Wales. At this same event, one of the members of Team COPE, Dr Fabiana Lorencatto, received the 2016 Early Career Award from the Society. Many congratulations to both, and we are grateful to have you on board this project!

The midwife/health visitor study is still ongoing, with our final midwife interviews coming up in the next couple of weeks. Currently we are at 73% of our target sample. The health visitor arm of this study is now undergoing data analysis and we will update you more on this very soon!

Finally, this year, Ryc is doubling (tripling!) her efforts in finalising the midwife-health visitor survey, which will hopefully be available to access in a couple of months’ time.

If you would like more information or have any questions about any of these studies please email cope@city.ac.uk.

Thank you once again for your support and our very best wishes for the new year!

-Team COPE

A warm hello and welcome to our December news update!

We’ve been rather busy in the lead up to the holiday season, and we are happy to announce that we have now completed recruitment and data collection for the women’s study. As such, the call for participants is now officially closed. Thank you to all of you who have helped us throughout this work. We are also excited to report that findings from this study, entitled New mothers’ views on continuity of care provided by midwives and health visitors, have been presented at the UK Society for Behavioural Medicine conference (Hilton Hotel, Cardiff, Wales), and we will share more with you in due course.

In regards to the midwife/health visitor interview study, we are still looking for midwives to take part in this research. So far we have reached 67% of our target, and we’ve still got quite a way to go. Again, we ask for your support in telling friends and colleagues about this research, which aims to explore the experiences of midwives and health visitors of working in partnership or being in contact with each other.

Finally, we would like to extend our thanks to Joy Murray (University of the West of England) for including our systematic review article in the September 2016 Research Roundup of the Journal of Health Visiting. We are very happy to know that this work is reaching many different groups – we hope that you will also get in touch to ask us questions, or give us comments on our review.

May you all have a wonderful festive season, and we look forward to sharing and developing more exciting activities and work in the upcoming year!

-Team COPE