Improving access to structured education for people with type 1 and type 2 diabetes

Diabetes

Project Overview

All CCGs, acute trusts and community trusts are encouraged to get involved in the major programme now underway to increase uptake of structured education for people with type 1 and type 2 diabetes, which HIN is running (on behalf of Southwark CCG as the lead organisation) using NHS England transformation funds. This programme will deliver significant improvements in people’s ability to live well and manage their condition effectively, reducing diabetes complications and emergencies.

The HIN Diabetes team is working alongside commissioners, providers and service users to design a local programme for improving results on the 3 key treatment targets for Diabetes. This will comprise of a new educational offer and referral pathways across South London, including primary care e-learning, structured education hub, Think Diabetes workplace initiative and additional structured education capacity.

Improving access to structured education for people with type 2 diabetes and related support for self-management

As part of our project to optimise the delivery of and access to structured education for Type 2 diabetes we have produced a toolkit to address the causes and barriers to low uptake of structured education for people with type 2 diabetes and to provide guidance on how to make high quality structured education easily accessible across South London. The toolkit has been informed by service users, commissioners and providers, and has been supported by the London Clinical Network’s, Diabetes Clinical Leadership Group.

This toolkit outlines proven methods to optimise the delivery of structured education for type 2 diabetes, with a focus on how commissioners, providers and referrers can each work to improve uptake in their area.

The toolkit provides resources and guidance for:

Commissioners to understand how structured education can meet public health needs, through the type of programmes available, how to implement effective self-referrals, how to agree service specifications and optimal data collection methods.
Providers to understand; how to approach ‘harder to reach’ groups and how to increase the likelihood of the person with diabetes attending the course, along with guidance on supporting referrers and on optimising data collection.
Referrers to successfully engage the person with diabetes, including what information should be presented and key skills needed to increase uptake.

Alongside the resources and guidance the toolkit contains case studies and videos from areas that have been successful in increasing uptake onto structured education courses and offer an opportunity to hear from people with diabetes who have accessed these programmes, to bring to life the positive effects well implemented programmes can have on the health outcomes of people with type 2 diabetes.

You can download the toolkit here.