The latest academic paper evaluating the Healthy Conversation Skills training programme soon to be offered to maternity and child health professionals here in has been published in the Journal of Health Psychology.
The paper reports that the workforce trained so far in Southampton, UK, have changed their practice in the short, medium and long term and have incorporated their new skills into their daily, routine contact with mothers, families and caregivers. The paper also explores why the training has been successful and how it supports public health objectives aimed at encouraging people to make healthier lifestyle choices.
“This study demonstrates that front-line practitioners at all levels can be given training in client-centred skills to support behaviour change and that changes to their practice seem to persist over time,” the report’s authors comment.
“We have shown that this training can be made accessible and acceptable to staff, who can use these skills during routine care.”
The Healthy Conversation Skills training programme is currently being adapted for use in as part of Gravida’s new Ministry of Health (MOH)-funded Healthy Start Workforce Project. The project is being developed in partnership with the NZ College of Midwives, Plunket, Tipu Ora and the Heart Foundation, and will complement other successful kaupapa approaches, training and education initiatives already in place for these organisations.
Maternity and child health professionals from these organisations as well as Tamariki Ora Well Child Providers and DHB staff will be able to participate in Healthy Conversation Skills training as well as an education programme about the latest research and official guidelines in nutrition and physical activity for pregnancy, post-partum and a child’s early years. Other staff from other related roles and organisations will be offered the programmes in stages following this.
The hope is that both programmes together will increase the skills and confidence of maternity and childcare health professionals to talk to their clients about nutrition, physical activity and healthy lifestyle choices, in order to prevent the risk of non-communicable diseases (such as diabetes, heart disease and obesity) later in life.
The paper entitled 'Making every contact count': Evaluation of the impact of an intervention to train health and social care practitioners in skills to support health behaviour change details the evaluation approach taken by the team from the MRC’s Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, University of Southampton, UK. It notes a dramatic shift in practice from “telling/suggesting answers” to mothers, families and caregivers to the use of open discovery questions, listening, reflecting and creating opportunities for discussions that explore the options available to a family.
The paper also points to factors contributing to the success of the workforce programme, such as:
“Healthy Conversation Skills training offers a client-centred counselling approach to supporting behaviour change,” the report authors conclude. “As with other such approaches, it is based on the understanding that giving clients knowledge is insufficient to change their behaviour; they must also be motivated to change. This therefore requires a style of communication that is not reliant on advice-giving and instruction … client-centred approaches to behaviour change are characterised instead by exploratory conversations through which the practitioner attempts to understand the world of the client and the context of the presenting problem, and supports clients to plan their own solutions,” the report authors say.
The Journal’s editorial in the same issue is also co-authored by two of the report’s authors, Drs Wendy Lawrence and Mary Barker, and comments on the increasing value and role they see for health psychologists in supporting population health initiatives in the future.
Dr Wendy Lawrence has been in in March/April 2014 as an advisor for Gravida’s Healthy Start Workforce Project, running pilot workshops of the intended Healthy Conversation Skills training with several groups.
Healthy Conversation Skills training and the other education programme will launch in 2015.