The community pharmacy is the healthcare space most accessed by the general public. The service and purpose of pharmacists is undergoing huge change, but the spaces where they work has not yet been seriously examined.
Prof Kate Allen from Rix Inclusive Research and Sam Walker from purpleSTARS are part of the research team led by Dr Ranjita Dhital at UCL. The project is funded by Pharmacy Research UK.
This UCL research project asks two questions:
What is the architecture of the community pharmacy?
What might it be in the future?
On her second visit to the pharmacy, Sam created a drawing which the pharmacist asked to display on her door
We are exploring the spaces of pharmacies of the future
Prof Kate Allen, Rix Inclusive Research Institute
In the video below, you will see Sam’s visit to her local pharmacy, including her drawings and suggested ideas for the decor.
Whether we like to admit it or not we all make assumptions about people. For example, we make assumptions that the older generation can’t use technology or that people with learning disabilities can’t have jobs or adult relationships. These assumptions are based on prejudices that we have about people that distort our views and create inequality and unfairness in society.
I work for Rix Research & Media. I work with a colleague who has a mild learning disability called Ajay, also known as the Wiki Master. Pre Covid-19, I did not work directly with Ajay. We were work colleagues who knew each other and spoke to each other daily. We often spoke in our mother tongue, Gujarati. I recall when Ajay spoke to me in Gujarati for the first time and how I realised that he was able to express himself much better than in English. So there was one assumption proved wrong – that his use of English, a second language, was an indicator of his cognitive ability.
Kanchan and AjayAjay with Santino from purpleSTARS
Ajay runs a weekly workshop in our office with some members of the purpleSTARS, a group that brings together artists and technologists with and without learning difficulties. The group’s aim is to transform museum experiences and make them really inclusive through the use of sensory and digital media. With the outbreak of Covid-19 and remote working enforced, this workshop continued virtually, online. I volunteered to join and co-facilitate these sessions with Ajay.
Over the last several weeks I have been observing Ajay during these sessions. I had what you might call an epiphany during our recent session. Ajay’s capability and skill blew me away. I realised that I was the third wheel in the session! My steer and input was not needed or required. I sat in silence, listened and watched my colleague Ajay with an overwhelming feeling of pride.
purpleSTARS zoom session
I watched and listened as Ajay confidently took control of the session, told the participants what they were going to do, provided detailed instructions and shared his screen to model and generate ideas for the Wiki they were working on. One of the group could not think of content to add so Ajay helped him reflect on meals he had made the previous week. During the session some of them admitted they were a little out of spirits and It was wonderful to watch Ajay motivate, encourage and support them and to witness firsthand how they look up to him.
What I realised in that moment was that Ajay is a very competent and capable person. I realised that with the right support, encouragement and opportunities anyone can flourish, grow and reach their full potential.
We wanted to show how staying connected can help us all feel less alone and in order to put this to the test, we held a competition to encourage people to share their lockdown stories and experiences as a way of supporting each other through challenging times.
After three weeks of online activity, with over 100 posts and more than 500 likes, our Stay Connected lockdown stories competition came to an end on Monday 1 June 2020.
It was inspiring to see the different ways in which people shared their thoughts and feelings, some with regular video updates, some using words and pictures and some sharing their creative projects. We went through all the contributions, counted the likes and decided to award prizes in the following five categories – Best Stories, Best Posts, Poster King/Queen, Best Chat and Overall Winner. Here are the winners in each category with some reflections from Rix Director, Andy Minnion, captured from the online awards ceremony held on Wednesday 10 June on zoom.
Best Stories – Ros
“Ros helped keep everybody’s spirits up…you can tell that she was thinking of other people and…putting up stories to encourage her friends”
Best Posts – Michael
“Michael delighted us with some beautiful photographs and lovely stories…it lifted everybody’s spirits seeing you talk about going on your bike and it being bumpy on your bottom!”
Poster Queen – Annette
“Annette posted up some lovely pictures…some really lovely work and great support from her sister Helen to get the pictures up there”
Best Chat – Lauren
“…lovely use of emoticons, lovely messages”
First prize – Charmaine
“What a star Charmaine has been! Charmaine has produced a lovely video that puts together a lot of her posts, a lot of the lovely paintings she’s produced but also posts about food, about meditation…it’s enabled us all to have a real insight into the life of a very creative and gifted young woman…it’s helped keep our spirits up!”
In response to the Coronavirus pandemic travel restrictions, 24 teachers involved in the Me and Your Stories project (MYS) decided to hold a zoom meeting to share their experience of distance teaching and discuss how the MYS project can support them through these challenging times. The meeting took place on 19 May and was the first time the group had met up since they got together in Berlin in October 2019. The zoom session was hosted by Stana Schenck, one of our German partners, and a video of the meeting was shared on YouTube and added to the MYS Wiki.
MYS zoom meeting gallery view
Participants were encouraged to share their thoughts and reflections using one of the tools from the MYS toolbox, padlet.
Padlet was also used to share people’s locations on a map of Europe and each participant was given the opportunity to say a bit about their lockdown circumstances.
Where is everybody?
People shared their experiences of distance teaching in their respective countries and talked about the differences in local policy frameworks. Most teachers agreed that it would be good to have MYS webinars in different languages for teaching staff in the different countries, something the project has already started doing in Romania, Austria and Germany.
“We want our learners to stay connected and enjoy the new ways of schooling”
MYS project teacher
After such a positive experience online, the teachers are already planning a follow-up zoom in the autumn.
The SEND commissioning team at West Sussex have partnered up with their Short Break providers to produce a public Wiki full of helpful information about Covid-19 and how to thrive during the coronavirus pandemic.
As well as providing a wealth of useful resources, the Wiki is also full of practical suggestions for activities for children, young people and their families and carers during these challenging times.
There’s something for everyone here, from young children to young adults, including YouTube videos, links to online activities and lots of ideas for keeping busy and learning new things.
Why not take a short break yourself and check out the West Sussex public Wiki here:
Rix is part of a Europe-wide project called MYS – Me and Your Stories – which promotes multimedia approaches in the classroom to sharing personal stories in order to promote better understanding between learners of diverse cultures, backgrounds and perspectives.
As part of this project we are asking people to share their lockdown stories with the chance of winning prizes for the best contributions. We want to know what people have been doing to stay safe, stay happy, stay busy and stay connected.
Stories can be captured in any format and we hope that the multimedia approaches we’ve been using with the project will encourage people to be creative with their entries.
Entries can be submitted by email to rixadmin@uel.ac.uk and the winning stories will be made public on the MYS project portal at https://wiki.rixwiki.org/mys/home
The deadline for the MYS competition is 5pm Friday 10 July.
The winners of the MYS lockdown stories competition will be announced at 2pm on Thursday 16 July during the MYS Heroes and Role Models zoom event.
We were all thrilled to see the Rix Wiki logo splashed across Nasdaq’s impressive teal display in Times Square this week. Nasdaq organised this with TechForce19 as a gesture of support for the Rix Centre’s work with the NHSx TechForce19 initiative.
The Rix Wiki logo on display in Times Square
As part of our Stay Connected project we are now evaluating and reporting on the Rapid Pilot we have been doing with 168 disabled people and their support teams from four care organisations across England and Wales. We hope to secure further funding for Stay Connected in order to scale up our digital solution for isolated and vulnerable people both during the Coronavirus lockdown and afterwards.
As part of this project we hope to develop public specifications and standards for the concept of an online support network for learning disabled people that enables and engages them so that they can stay connected, stay well and be supported remotely by health and care teams.
Watch this space for more Stay Connected updates.
The NHSX TechForce19 programme’s mission is to deploy technology to help vulnerable people isolated by COVID19. NHSX called on all innovators who can support the elderly, vulnerable and self-isolating to apply for government funding of up to £25,000 to test their solution.
Rix Inclusive Research is one of only 18, from 1643 applicants, to have been awarded the funding. We applied with our Stay Connected solution, the Rix Multi Me toolkit, which offers multimedia support networking for people with learning disabilities, their support workers and carers. Two of our partners, KIM Software Solutions and the Nottinghamshire based eLearning team, were also part of our bid consortium.
Led by Rix Inclusive Research at UEL, Stay Connected is a collaboration between Rix and Multi Me that builds on pilot projects that have been exploring the combination of Rix Wikis and our EasySurvey with the Multi Me set of mini-apps. During the COVID19 lockdown, people with learning disabilities who are isolated and at risk can use the Rix Multi Me toolkit as a safe and easy-to-use social and support network.
The Rix Multime toolkit
Funding provides £25K for a pilot trial that we are running with the national charity, MacIntyre and supported adults in Milton Keynes, the Wirral, Warrington and Wrexham. Havencare from the South West are also part of the pilot, alongside Ashcroft Support who are based in Sussex and Surrey, and Redbridge, North London, where we are working with the local authority’s Adult Care Service team. There are about 200 supported users in the pilot and over 80 support workers and care professionals as well as a number of family carers.
My Circle provides a support network
This is a 2-3 week rapid pilot designed to show how people’s support circles, lost or disrupted through the lockdown, can be re-established and strengthened through day-to-day diary reporting, goal-setting activities, online chat and the capacity for remote support from key workers.
“I’d be lost without it [the toolkit]…it’s so good the way people are communicating with each other, they’re showing us how they’re feeling, how they’re spending their time…and it’s a safe environment for everyone to be in.”
The need for regular face-to-face contact during the Coronavirus lockdown is forcing us to find new ways of staying in touch and checking that those we care for and care about are safe and well.
Video calls using Zoom, Skype, FaceTime etc. are the default solution for those who are able to access and use these apps and we should be encouraging the use of these with support networks and care providers.
The Rix Stay Connected project is piloting the use of the Rix Multi me toolkit to enable people to chat with others in their circles of support and give structure to their time at home. The user friendly and colourful interface and the ability to add media like photos, stickers and videos make this a fun and engaging platform.
Rix EasySurvey also has its part to play during these unprecedented times. Sending out a short accessible survey is a quick and easy way to check in with the people we support. This could be done on a daily or weekly basis and would enable support workers, Social Workers, clinicians, teachers and other professionals to chart the changes in people’s wellbeing over a period of time by looking at the data that is submitted to the EasySurvey account holders.
We are offering free trials of EasySurvey Lite and encourage you to take up this offer in order to help stay connected during the Coronavirus lockdown. Try out this groundbreaking software and let us know what you think.
To sign up for your free trial click on the link button below:
A message for carers, support workers, teachers, health and social care staff, care providers, care homes, schools, colleges, day services and community organisations.
Stay Connected with the people who you support with a secure social network that can also work as a support network during the lockdown.
Using the Stay Connected software, you will be able to
message people you support in an accessible way
connect with people’s circles of support to work together
share pictures, videos, links and files
support people to use a diary, a calendar and a simple planner
use a Rix Wiki to share important wellbeing information
use easy surveys to check in with groups of people
The Rix Multi Me toolkit works on computers, tablets and smartphones
The Buddy tool helps you keep people safe, enabling you to step in when necessary.
With its suite of mini-apps, Stay Connected will help you to support structured activity for people while they are staying at home.
Stay Connected is there to complement traditional channels of communication, like phone calls and video calls, rather than replace them.
The concerned parent carer of a disabled young person encourages people to plan ahead and shares her solution with us
Kate (not her real name but a real life situation) was very concerned about the prospect of her disabled son being admitted alone to hospital in the future with Covid-19. The thought of not being able to accompany her son due to illness, or not being allowed access to him because of hospital protocol, filled her with anxiety.
Kate decided to prepare a Core Information for Emergency Hospital Admission sheet which outlines the key information that hospital staff would need to know to support her son. Kate received feedback from 10 parent/carers of children and young people with disabilities, all of whom felt it was a very good idea. Kate then sought feedback from a medical clinician who confirmed that all the most important information is included on the sheet and that the tips were really useful, especially laminating and photographing the information. He confirmed that the information Kate included would be very important to the team and would facilitate appropriate care.
NICE published their Covid-19 rapid guideline for critical care on 25 March 2020. The purpose of this guideline is to maximise the safety of patients who need critical care during the pandemic, whilst protecting staff from infection.
All Kate wants is that her precious son is cared for in the right way and that her initiative helps even one child, young person, adult or elderly loved one if they are admitted to hospital.
“Please complete a Core Information for Emergency Hospital Admission sheet for your loved one if they have specific care and support needs”
You can use the links below to view or download Kate’s Core Information for Emergency Hospital Admission sheet (anonymised example) and Core Information Sheet tips which we also feature below.
ACT NOW in case the people who know the child/young person/person become unwell. Gather all the key information which could help in an emergency situation
Try to include a second contact so that the hospital has alternative contacts for any further information they may need
If you do not know your child/young person/person’s weight – weigh them now and include this information to help medical staff work out the levels of medication they may need. Having this information to hand will save time in an emergency
Include ALL medication that the child/young person/person takes
Fill in the How to keep me and others safe as if the child/young person/person you support is not being supported by you or another familiar adult
You can add a One Page Profile/likes/dislikes/communication guidelines to the back. Remember the front sheet is CORE INFORMATION to help hospital staff to support an individual in an emergency situation
Include name of person and their relationship to the supporter who has filled in the sheet
Highlight the most important information, for example if you have an allergy
LAMINATE your sheet if possible (or put in A4 plastic sleeve) – this is so it can be disinfected
If you are a parent you can take a photo of the sheet so it is available on your phone
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Rix is part of a Europe-wide project called MYS – Me and Your Stories – which promotes multimedia approaches in the classroom to sharing personal stories in order to promote better understanding between learners of diverse cultures, backgrounds and perspectives.
