Who we are
Talking Health is a Network of independent freelance consultants, organisations and individuals supportive of the development of integrated self care and self-management for people living with long-term conditions; and the health and social care professionals that support them.
The members of the Talking Health share a collective vision of a world in which people living with long-term conditions have the knowledge, confidence and skills they need to live their lives to the full.
We support organisations to build their self-management capacity, through the training and support of people living with long term conditions, the development of professional practice and the design and development of cost effective healthcare services that integrate self-management.
The members and Directors of Talking Health Network Ltd - Jane Cooper-Neville, Jean Thompson and Catherine Cross - have been at the forefront of the development and expansion of self-management interventions and transformational change programmes over the past twenty years.
The Talking Health Road Map to Systematic Self Care - a step-by-step guide
The Road Map provides an approach and tools that will assist CCGs/Trusts and Local Authorities to make informed decisions on where best to target the resources that support people living with long term conditions to actively self-manage. In addition, it provides information relating to the effectiveness of providers of self-management interventions and cost benefit information that can help commissioners both to drive value for money and to support evidence-based dialogue across budgetary divides.
The Road Map contents:
- A Tool Kit of local self-management resources for use by healthcare professionals to support people living with long-term conditions to self-manage effectively
- A methodology for evaluating the effectiveness of self-management support
- A model for establishing the cost benefit of self-management services on an ongoing basis
- A clear insight into how people living with long-term conditions and professionals want to be supported to self-manage
- A map of existing self-management support across a region
- Agreed definitions relating to self-management
- An evidence-based case for self-management support.
This approach results in:
- People living with long-term conditions who have the knowledge, confidence and skills to self-manage supported by....
- Clinicians who are equally skilled in facilitating self-management; both working within....
- Systems and processes that are supportive and enabling.
The Road Map also delivers a legacy skill capability and a mechanism for capacity building, both in the provider base and in the CCG/Trust or Local Authority, reducing reliance on external support.
The Road Map is designed to:
- Increase the number of people with a long-term condition engaging in effective self-management
- Improve the effectiveness of the self-management interventions across a region and
- Integrate and systematise self-management into care planning.