Friday 19 April 2013

‘Attachment in Common Sense and Doodles’ by Miriam Silver



We are very pleased to announce that Dr Silver’s book, ‘Attachment in Common Sense and Doodles’ is now available to buy online from Amazon in print or kindle form,

The book explains attachment in language that is easy to understand with a series of simple doodles that helps to describe how to apply this information in everyday life. This book has been described as an invaluable resource for families and professionals caring for children who are fostered, adopted or who have experienced early trauma. The content covers all of the ‘need to know’ issues including how to spot attachment difficulties, build resilience and empathy as well as how to respond to problematic behaviour.

If you have already read the book and have any feedback we would love to hear it, so get in touch and let us know!

Fancy working for Evolving Families?

Check out the latest vacancies for a temporary part-time administrator and honorary summer placement student by following the links below:


Wednesday 17 April 2013

Waitrose Community Matters scheme



We were delighted to hear that for the month of April Evolving Families is one of three local good causes that Waitrose in Central Milton Keynes have chosen to support as part of their Community Matters scheme!

So if you believe in what we do and would like to support us, the next time you shop at Waitrose don’t forget to place your green token in our box :)  The more tokens we get, the bigger the donation we will receive - meaning more children and families can receive subsidised help for their difficulties.

Read more about the Waitrose Community Matters scheme by following this link


Launch Event

A big thank you to everyone who came to our free launch event of our Social Enterprise on Friday 1st March 2013. It was a great success and we received lots of positive feedback from professionals who attended the day. Thank you also to Buszy for allowing us to hire their venue and to their staff who helped us throughout the day :) 

Free talks were given by both Dr Miriam Silver and Jen Wilson on the topics of attachment, perinatal and parental mental health and the Social Enterprise model.

Around 70 professionals attended the day from a variety of backgrounds, including those working in the Social Care, Health, Education, Voluntary, Community, Legal, Parenting and Child sectors as well as professionals providing attachment related services to children and families.In addition those wanting to find out more about our services, in collaborating with us or commissioning us to provide therapy, training, consultation, evaluation and/or research were also invited to attend. 

Some of the positive feedback we received about the day included…

“The attachment in the classroom and perinatal sessions consolidated what I knew and gave me significant food for thought!”

“Every session had something to provoke thoughts or practice changes.”

“I will use what I have heard today to help me and my colleagues develop the work that we do and to give supporting evidence to senior staff of what work we need to do.”

“Clear, informative and accessible information.”

“The gaps you have identified are spot on! The services you are planning, I so agree with the early preventative need!”

Friday 5 April 2013

Doing Diabetes Differently

‘Doing Diabetes Differently’

We are proud to announce that we have been awarded a £75,000 Shine award from the Health Foundation to deliver the ‘Doing Diabetes Differently’ project, in association with Milton Keynes Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

The project hopes to improve patient’s commitment to their diabetes treatment regimens by improving their mental wellbeing. It is envisaged that by offering psychological support patients will be able to make sense of their diabetes, fit it into their lives and will feel more empowered to manage their diabetes effectively.

We are one of 30 project teams from across the UK whose innovative idea to improve the quality of healthcare is being put to the test in 2013/14.

The innovations, selected for the Health Foundation’s Shine programme, are testing new approaches to delivering healthcare that will either support patients to be active partners in their own care, improve patient safety or improve quality while reducing costs.

Background to the project
At more than £2 billion per annum, diabetes represents one of the greatest, and growing, costs in healthcare, rising by 8.9% each year, and is predicted to ‘bankrupt the NHS’ by 2035. The incidence of mental health problems in people with diabetes is very high, and is linked with poor dietary control and treatment adherence. This leads to increased risk of poor health outcomes and premature mortality, doubling the cost of treatment.

However, despite NICE recommendations, there is a scarcity of readily accessible, appropriate, effective psychological support for diabetes patients throughout the UK. NHS trusts lack the finance to invest in new services, leading to the current stalemate.

Following a voluntary pilot of solution-focused psychotherapy, this project seeks to introduce psychological screening questionnaires as part of routine clinic appointments and to provide brief psychotherapeutic interventions to aid treatment adherence as an integrated part of medical treatment, for those who need it. It will use data from questionnaires, blood-test results and uptake of medical services to build a model of risk factors and evaluate which of these are improved by brief psychotherapeutic interventions.

The approach overcomes the funding challenge by using social enterprise employees to deliver the service through a Social Impact Bond model. This means that the service will receive payment in arrears, based on results at the end of each year of provision. This will enable the hospital to ‘save to spend’ rather than ‘spend to save’, breaking the funding deadlock.

The project will comprise a self-contained year-long evaluation of the improvement in patient care and reduction in costs. However, part of the project will be to establish the viability of outcome-based contracting for a Social Enterprise company within a health setting.
Dr Miriam Silver, Consultant Clinical Psychologist, who is managing the project said, “This is a very exciting collaboration which we hope will improve patient experience and quality of life. Our delivery model is unique and we hope to be successful in securing on-going funding in arrears according to the outcomes we achieve”.

Dr Asif Ali, Consultant and lead for diabetes at Milton Keynes Hospital said: “Milton Keynes has a growing and ageing population, and more people are being diagnosed with diabetes. We’re excited about this project: helping patients manage their diabetes will not only improve patients’ quality of life, but will help the hospital save money in the long-term due to having to treat fewer complications that can result from it not being effectively controlled.”

Dr Jane Jones, Assistant Director at the Health Foundation, said, ‘Innovative approaches are required to tackle the challenges that we are facing today in healthcare. We want to encourage innovators in the service to lead the way in thinking differently and to show how new approaches can deliver better healthcare.

This year we have chosen the 30 best innovative ideas, selected from a large number of applicants. The project teams will have the challenge of demonstrating the practicality of their ideas and show that they can improve quality and reduce costs with the potential to have high impact when scaled up across the UK. Our aim is to share and promote the most effective innovations to the clinical and managerial leaders of the UK healthcare system and policy-makers.’
This latest round of the Shine programme is the largest ever run by the Health Foundation. It has 30 project teams, selected from a high number of quality applications from across the health service.