CWP NHS Looks to Improve Health and Wellbeing with Chat Integration
Cheshire and Wirral Partnership (CWP) NHS Foundation Trust, provides services in partnership with commissioners, local authorities, voluntary and independent organisations, people who use the services and their carers.
The services CWP cover are:
- Mental Health
- Substance misuse
- Learning disability
- Community physical health
The Trust also provides specialist services within 6 locations in the North East of England.
Providing Services to Young People
CWP deliver a health and wellbeing service to young people, aiming to empower them to make informed decisions on healthy lifestyles. As part of delivering this service, CWP is investigating into ways on extending their reach and approachability, their latest adoption is live chat integration.
The purpose of the live chat service is to advise young people on matters of sexual, mental and general health, helping them to take responsibility for their own wellbeing. The chats will be conducted by volunteers and take place in the evening, ensuring the service is at a convenient time when visitors will be out of school or college.
The Trust is likely to see an increase in engagement for this age group, as millennials prefer text-based communication over traditional methods such as a phone call. They can be more anonymous via live chat without having to provide identifiable contact details including a phone number or email address.
These types of chats are usually of a sensitive nature, as the visitor will share personal information of their current situation, therefore the chat needs to be secure from an operational level but also on a personal level it needs to make the visitor comfortable enough to discuss their enquiry.
Live Chat Security
The top priority for NHS organisations is patient confidentiality, this remains a main concern regardless of which channel is used to advise visitors, in person, over the phone or live chat.
All data transferred through the Click4Assistance solution is stored in the UK’s largest data centre and complies with the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) regulations. The solution is encrypted to the highest level, ensuring the uttermost security and privacy. Chats are transmitted with SHA-256bit encryption making them equivalently as safe as a payment page.
Volunteer Secureness
As CWP works with volunteers to deliver some of their services, they need to ensure every security measure has been taken to safeguard the visitor.
In any organisation that has volunteers they undergo background checks - Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS), this is to investigate whether an individual has any convictions, cautions, reprimands or final warnings, it can also include if local police has any additional information that is relevant to the role. This ensures anyone dealing with sensitive information and vulnerable people are not a risk of breaching their safety.
Upon passing the DBS checks, volunteers will usually receive training for the organisation they are working for. In rare situations, breaches of security can still occur despite a person passing their checks and having full training. The Click4Assistance solution allows for some extra safety measures to be enabled, ensuring all users are operating the system in the most appropriate manner.
This includes:
- IP restriction
- Login Access Times
- Module Selection
- Supervisor Monitoring
If volunteers are working from home, you can restrict the IP address they can log into the solution from. Ensuring they are in their home helps to validate that it is them handling the chats. Your organisation can even assign the time period that the advisor can log in from and to, helping to guarantee they access the software only between the agreed times.
The volunteer’s user profile can be set to basic permissions, where modules can be reduced to only allow access to the chat dashboard. Not only does this restrict the areas the volunteer can see, it can also help with training as it simplifies the areas they need to learn about.
To ensure volunteers are not left on their own a supervisor can be logged into the software and monitor the current chats in real time. By entering the viewing mode the visitor and operator are not aware the chat is being observed, and the supervisor can ensure the chat is appropriate and the correct information is being given. Once chats are completed they can be stored within the Click4Assistance solution, where supervisors can access individual chats or run a report over a period of time to examine all chats that have occurred.
Ensuring the Visitor Feels Secure
Advisors are trained to be compassionate and the best methods to communicate with visitors in various situations. However, the visitor needs to feel confident enough that reaching out by any method of communication will be with a CWP representative.
All visitor facing aspects of the Click4Assistance solution is fully customisable, and CWP have taken full advantage of that, making their button appeal to young people with the text used, and applying their organisation’s colours throughout the designs. The customisation helps to boost visitor confidence that they are speaking with CWP rather than a third party.
The 6Cs
CWP adopted the 6Cs as the Trust’s values, these include:
- Care
- Compassion
- Competence
- Communication
- Courage
- Commitment
Communication between the organisation, volunteers and visitors needs to be precise; using the channels that visitors prefer will help the Trust to improve their engagement rates and customer satisfaction, and lead to evolved delivery of health and wellbeing services.
Click4Assistance has been providing live chat services for over 10 years and has helped healthcare companies to improve patient services, including BMI Healthcare, Cancer Research and The Priory Group. For more information contact our healthcare co-ordinator on 01268 524628 or email theteam@click4assistance.co.uk
