NELFT NHS Foundation Trust (North East London NHS Foundation Trust) provides an extensive range of integrated community and mental health services for people living in four outer London boroughs and Barnet, Essex and Kent. With an annual budget of £355 million, the Trust offers care and treatment for a population of more than 4 million. It employs approximately 6,000 staff who work across 210 bases in London, Essex, Kent and Medway.
Since 2017 NELFT has given all its employees access to Read&Write, offering quick, convenient access to its suite of literacy support tools on PCs and laptops via an easy-to-use toolbar.
The benefits
As Equality and Diversity Assistant Manager Michael Beackon explains, licensing the software across the Trust allows staff to use it whenever they need without feeling ‘different’: “From an accessibility perspective, we want all our employees to feel that they’re treated equally. All the great benefits of Everway's tools are there for everybody.”
One of the Trust’s ‘super users’ is Senior Occupational Therapist Marie-Antoinette Ferreira-Pursley. As well as using it extensively in her own daily work, she also trains other members of staff to familiarize them with the software's versatile features.
“I really struggled with writing tasks when I was younger,” says Marie-Antoinette. “There was that classic thing of words dancing around on paper in front of your eyes. It wasn’t picked up at school, but when I went to study for my degree in Occupational Therapy at Northampton University it was my tutor who suggested there might be something else going on.
“So when I was screened for dyslexia it all suddenly clicked into place. At last I understood why I had problems with processing, storing and recalling information, and why it was getting in the way of writing to the standard I needed for my studies."
From an accessibility perspective, we want all our employees to feel that they’re treated equally. All the great benefits of Read&Write are there for everybody.”
Power of productivity
While she spends a lot of her working time in the community, Marie-Antoinette relies on the software while she’s catching up on paperwork in the office.
“It makes my life so much simpler in lots of different ways." As Marie-Antoinette notes, it has had a major positive impact on her efficiency and wellbeing in the workplace: “I’m so much less stressed and anxious now. I couldn’t do my job without it.”
At university I was able to access the Read&Write tool but could not do so within the Trust systems. I’m delighted to hear that the Trust has now gained a network wide license for the software."
Software that is beneficial for all
Recognizing the benefits of neuroinclusive technology, Belfast Trust were keen to make sure all employees knew that it was available. As well as sharing how it could help them in their daily reading, writing and research tasks. This includes Doctors, nurses, administrative staff, carers, social workers and new recruits.
“Everway's tools has the potential to support all staff,” explains Estella. “It makes everyday literacy tasks simpler, quicker and more accurate. It helps to improve productivity and time management for all employees, across all divisions of the Trust. It was important to us that all our staff knew of the benefits it could offer.”
This involved making the software readily available, and spreading the word to their large workforce.
As Equality Manager, Estella led this process. Below, she shares how they successfully rolled out the software to their workforce of 20,000.
Belfast Trust wanted to make it easy for all staff to access Read&Write in a non-judgemental and neuroinclusive way. Estella explains:
“We realize that individuals with disabilities don’t always feel confident to disclose their disability. In fact, at Belfast Trust, we know that there is significant under-reporting of disability amongst our staff (2%). By making it readily available to all, every employee can access the software with discretion. It also facilitates timely reasonable adjustments for staff. It removes the need to wait for a referral and recommendation from Occupational Health, which could take up to a year.”
It saves me a lot of time if I’m writing a long document or composing a sensitive email. It really helps me proof-read thoroughly before it goes out."
The gift of time
Another enthusiastic user is Gemma Strawford, Pathway Lead Specialist in NELFT’s Learning Disabilities team. Working with children across Essex, her job entails lengthy write-ups of field assessments, observations and recommendations for young people under her care. Like Marie-Antoinette, Gemma’s own dyslexia was diagnosed while she was studying at university.
“I often found myself staring at the letters of a familiar word that would look jumbled up. The wrong words would keep coming out while I was writing, it was a real challenge structuring long sentences, and that was slowing me down.”
As a student Gemma developed various coping techniques to work around her dyslexia. But when she joined NELFT she quickly found that the tools had a transformative effect on her confidence to tackle tough literacy challenges.
The support to thrive
Recognizing the power of its neurodiverse workforce, NELFT’s commitment to neuroinclusive software helps ensure that every member of staff is fully supported and confident in delivering their workplace responsibilities.
Reflecting the Trust’s wider commitment to diversity and inclusion, NELFT has also added speech, reading and translation support to its own website nelft.nhs.uk. They have made this available with Everway's tool, ReachDeck. It's helping them to ensures that members of the community can readily access health services and information online, regardless of any literacy or neurodiverse challenges.
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