In April we published a communication toolkit: ‘Fundamentals of good communication: How to have effective everyday conversations’. This toolkit was developed in collaboration with the Child and Family Agency (Tusla) and a number of stakeholders from children’s social services and aims to support effective communication.
Through their work, HIQA and Tusla recognised that good communication is an important component of good quality care, and that further supports in this area would benefit people working in children’s social services.
We worked in collaboration with Tusla to develop the toolkit to support and enhance communication for Tusla staff in their work with children, families and foster carers.
Speaking about the toolkit, HIQA’s Director of Health Information and Standards, Rachel Flynn, said: “Good communication is a key part of national standards developed by HIQA that are focused on the care and support of children. To support this and to build on current good practice within Tusla, we co-produced a toolkit on the Fundamentals of Good Communication to focus the attention of Tusla staff on the purpose of each communication they have with children, families and foster carers and to make interaction meaningful.”
(Above: Rachel Flynn, HIQA’s Director of Health Information and Standards)
Ger Brophy, Chief Social Worker in Tusla noted that: “This toolkit helps to ensure that children, families and foster carers understand what is happening on a day-to-day basis, feel involved in decisions that affect their lives, and have a sense of control regarding their care and support.”
Developed with input from children, families, foster carers and people working in children’s social services, the toolkit comes in two parts and is available on our website here. The first part is a tool that sets out key questions to help with everyday communication and reinforces the fundamentals of good communication.
The second part contains practical case studies where communication between children, young people, families and foster carers and Tusla staff went well and also where it was more challenging.
Alongside the toolkit, we have published a framework that sets out our key learnings from this collaborative project. Tusla will use this framework to support the implementation of the toolkit across its services.
Find out more about our toolkit on our website.
(Pictured at the beginning of this article, left to right: Maria MacInnes, Service Improvement Manager, Tusla, Kate Duggan, CEO, Tusla, Deirdre Connolly, Programme Manager, HIQA and Sarah Fitzgerald, Project Lead, HIQA launching the new toolkit)