Honouring the lived experience: Rape and Sexual Assault‎ Victims Taskforce option appraisal report

3. Short Life Working Group

In May 2018 at a meeting of the Taskforce held 15th May, 2018 it was agreed that a rigorous improvement approach was required to develop and appraise new service options for service delivery and give consideration to the service locations to ensure the criterion is met.

The Taskforce agreed to the appointment of an independent options appraisal lead, Kate Bell, NHS Lanarkshire, Head of Service Change & Transformation to work closely with a sub-group of the taskforce as a short life working group (SLWG) chaired by Professor Elizabeth Ireland. Tansy Main, Rape and Sexual Assault Taskforce Lead and Jana Sweeney, Rape and Sexual Assault Taskforce have made a significant contribution to the planning, delivery and analysis of the option appraisal process.

The short life working group membership was drawn from Taskforce members. The Terms of Reference for the short life working group were agreed as follows:

• Work with option appraisal lead to develop all relevant materials to inform the decision making at the event
• Work together to ensure the event and decision making reflects the needs of people with lived experience
• Further develop the current options for a service model (care, treatment, support) for people who have experienced sexual assault & rape.
• Develop models for the service configuration of the above model (service provision/where and how many).
• Establish the definitions of the quality attributes, benefits criteria, influencing factors to support decision making
• Agree the rankings and weightings of each of the options
• Agree who will present the service options and configuration models and agree how these will be described for the options appraisal event
• Attend the event as a key informant and if appropriate participate in the scoring of the models
• Review the event report as an accurate reflection of the process and support the chair of the SLWG to present the option appraisal recommendations to the taskforce at its meeting, 7th August, 2018.

An open, transparent and inclusive methodology was agreed to ensure that decisions about future service delivery and configuration would be informed by the views of people with lived experience and those who work in the services.

The approach included:

a) Building on work to date to develop options for the service model and service configuration in collaboration with key stakeholders, including those with lived experience.

b) Working up all aspects of the option appraisal approach through the SLWG to ensure an evidenced based approach to both the topic and service change methodology.

c) Ensuring inclusion of the work with Health Boards to undertake a guided self-assessment and gap analysis against the existing Healthcare Improvement Scotland standards (2017).

d) When the preferred service option and service configuration model are agreed, NHS Boards will act on this information together with the output from the HIS Standards self-assessment exercise, to help inform the development of a local, (costed) improvement and implementation plan for 2018-2020, to deliver the standards in the context of the agreed models.