Success Stories
BEST SUCCESS FOR COMMUNICATION AND AUTISM TEAM
BEST Leader Amy Bashford and her team decided BEST was an ideal opportunity to look at their working practices and to further improve the services that they provide. The Communications and Autism Team are responsible for providing support groups to parents of children with autism. These groups are run during the day and so parents who work full time are unable to attend- missing out on vital support and advice offered by the team and its partners. For the teams BEST Customer service Action they decided to trial an evening parents support group, The first group was set up in the south west of Birmingham and was attended by around 10 parents each week for 6 weeks. After the initial 6 week support block parents will be offered future evening ‘drop in’ sessions so that they can catch up with any new developments, share concerns and share experiences with other parents. This action has proved so successful with service users, that the team are now setting up another evening support group in the south of Birmingham and are negotiating running one in central Birmingham in the evening. BEST Leader Amy said: ‘The evening support group was very successful as many parents have been unable to attend the parent support groups that we have run during the day.’ The team also feels that through talking honestly and openly about team working and the service that they provide at their BEST Workshop, that they are now working successfully as a whole team and also as three service sub areas. They are meeting regularly to discuss caseloads, support groups, support for each other and any other issues. Another BEST success for this frontline team, is that the team now has a team notice board where they put any new ideas or resources for other team members to access and use. BEST Leader Amy Bashford said: ‘The only downside to this is that it’s not big enough!! It has been a really good success’
