See a range of comments and reflections from participants of recent workshops (opens PDF file)

"In 2017 Bedfordshire CCG was awarded funding from the NHS England Diabetes Care and Treatment Programme to improve delivery of Treatment Targets in General Practices.  To achieve this we developed a local incentivisation scheme for practices to deliver care planning as part of diabetes annual review.

Rosie Walker, Education Director, Successful Diabetes, was commissioned by Bedfordshire CCG to develop and deliver six half-day bespoke training sessions for Practices ‘Introduction to Personalised Care Planning for Diabetes’.  The audience included practice nurses, GPs and other health professionals and feedback was excellent. 

Rosie was unfailingly helpful and flexible in adapting the programme to meet training requirements.  The sessions were highly interactive and participative, structured but informal and included action planning by each participant.

This training has made a huge difference to motivating practices to incorporate care planning as the key element of the patient’s diabetes annual review.  We are pleased to say that within six-nine months of the launch almost all practices are now participating in this initiative".

Wendy Pearson, Programme Lead for Diabetes, Bedfordshire CCG

"Dear Rosie, it has been a real pleasure to work with you. I , and the ICDS team have learnt a lot and really enjoyed your sessions. I do hope we can work together in the future"

Julia Pledger, Nurse Consultant - Diabetes, Bedford

"Over the years we have worked closely with Successful Diabetes in helping shape our patient structured education programme and our staff development programmes.  Most recently Rosie Walker has delivered a series of workshops for our GPs and practice nurses exploring how best to help our patients engage with structured education.  The sessions have been consistently well received and reviewed and our specialist nurses enjoy working alongside Rosie. 

Successful Diabetes has always proven to be an extremely reliable and professional company and we will continue to work together in helping improve our diabetes services"

Helen Gough – Diabetes Service Lead, Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust

"We commissioned Rosie to deliver personalised care planning workshop for GPs and PNs in Swindon as part of Diabetes LES to encourage a new way of working. We couldn’t ask for a better person to do this! She is an excellent facilitator and meticulous in planning the workshop to meet our local needs.

The style of her workshop is innovative and models personalised care planning and partnership working. What better way to promote PCP than to practise it yourself.

Her workshop is unique not only because it models the principles of PCP, but the pre-workshop reading and course booklet was extremely useful and the resources she provided via web link were invaluable including practical examples of how other practices are implementing PCP.

We are very grateful to have a true national expert like Rosie to help us early on in our journey to realise our vision of personalised care planning for people with diabetes in Swindon"

Dr Jeshen Lau, Consultant in Diabetes & Endocrinology, Swindon

“Successful diabetes were fantastic at catering to our school and support staff needs (Our school is for children with hearing, speech, language and communication needs). You have really helped our education staff feel confident and competent at looking after and supporting children with diabetes. The communication between Rosie and myself was amazing! Thank you so much for all of your help. I will definitely be using your services again and would recommend you to other schools”

Annie Berrett, School Nurse, London

"NHS North East Essex commissioned Rosie Walker to provide training workshops for a range of clinicians in our area, with the purpose of driving forward the self-care agenda. Rosie was both flexible and accommodating in meeting our needs, and workshop participants - including GPs, community nurses and practice nurses - all said the training had given them a different way of looking at the patient as a person, and how they, as clinicians, could interact differently with them for the benefit of both parties. There were more than a few "light bulb moments"! I believe this will be fundamental in making sure that supported self-care becomes a meaningful reality. Thank you, Rosie!"

Ali Connolly, Commissioning Manager, NHS North East Essex

"As a Diabetes Network we were pondering how to begin introducing personalised care planning for people with diabetes in our area. We were very keen that personalised care planning in its broadest sense was implemented rather than just ticking the box for producing a template care plan document. In consideration of the planned changes in the NHS, the Diabetes Network had also been beginning to discuss how it could maintain its position as the driving force for the improvement of services for people with diabetes in North Somerset.

We approached Successful Diabetes asking for a working day to: Learn more about personalised care planning in diabetes and begin to form a plan about how this approach could be implemented Generate ideas and develop a plan for sustaining the Diabetes Network and developing diabetes services over the next 5-10 years

Successful Diabetes produced a very promising and clear programme for the day from this very vague initial request, working with us at each step to ensure that we were happy. Jill and Rosie didn’t disappoint on the day and it was very productive and also very enjoyable. Everyone who attended went away motivated to adopt a personalised care planning approach within their role and some great ideas and an outline plan were agreed for sustaining the Diabetes Network. I would not hesitate in recommending Successful Diabetes, the workshop was very productive and people were supported and facilitated to learn and develop ideas."

Susie McMullen, Commissioning Manager, NHS North Somerset

"Since starting on a care planning for diabetes programme within the PCT, Rosie has been a continual source of support and advice. She has delivered care planning training workshops to over 50 professionals and managers with tremendous positive feedback. This has been the inspiration for a number of our practices to set up and implement their own care planning programs.

Rosie has delivered very enjoyable workshops ensuring all the participants were fully included throughout the day. There has been a mixture of presentations, small group discussion, care planning skills training as well as opportunities to set personal goals and action plans for implementing care planning in practice. She brings with her the experience she has gained both as a clinician and as a teacher/ facilitator as well as the experience of leading many other similar areas who are establishing care planning within primary care. She has been a great support to our programme so far, we will be continuing to use her skills for many future events."

Dr. Tom Humphries, Long-term clinical conditions lead, Derbyshire County PCT.

"Jill has been instrumental in helping us redesign our diabetes care. She has supported us in moving forward from giving adequate care that enabled us to meet QOF points, to completely redesigning our patient pathway for people with diabetes that uses the care planning approach and fits with the Year of Care aims. We have been among the first practices in the country to go live with the care planning approach. Jill has worked with clinicians across the practice to support improvements in prescribing and care in a way that empowers and enthuses, and has introduced in a clear, practical way how to use patient empowerment to improve care outcomes. We plan to use her again for more in-depth training in order to continue to provide best care."

Caroline Rollings, Managing Partner, Newport Pagnell Medical Centre

"Rosie ran a Group Facilitation Skills workshop for our whole Project team. She quickly established an informal and safe environment which enabled the usual barriers of communication and hierarchy to be broken down. The learning was interactive, fun and relevant and all enjoyed taking part. We all learned a lot from Rosie and from each other. The study day gave the facilitators the confidence to access and use the skills they already had, and also enhanced these skills with useful methods and ideas on organising group sessions to make them more successful and enjoyable. The whole team came away with increased confidence and enthusiasm and lots of tips for group facilitation. I would not hesitate to recommend this course to others."

Bridget Shobrook, Diabetes Prevention Facilitator, UEA-IFG Study, Norwich

"Asking Jill to deliver psychological sessions for the MERIT programme was vital to get the message across that the person with diabetes will not just suffer physical complications, but psychological and social too. The effective use of our DVD to stimulate group interaction was brilliantly executed with people fighting to share their views! Jill probed the health professionals to bring out attitudes and prejudices that they themselves did not realise they had. I believe they came away realising that yes clinical excellence is imperative, but NOT at the expense of compromising the psychological care of the person with diabetes. Jill's simple delivery method and excellent facilitation skills made this workshop thoroughly enjoyable, and it was refreshing to see this insulin initiation session done in a completely different way."

Sharon Mackenzie, (former) Diabetes Specialist Nurse and Educational Facilitator, Novo Nordisk Ltd.

"I thought the Group Education Facilitation Skills workshop run by Rosie was excellent. The session was led in a very practical way, demonstrating facilitation skills. Not only did it enable me to reflect on my own skills, but as a team we have recognised weaknesses with the current group education that we provide, and we are making efforts to improve the layout and content which in turn will improve the patient experience. Having the whole team available to attend is a really powerful way to improve services. Already Chris and I have changed the type 1 new patient group education with the aim of including a patient who has had diabetes for a longer time who can provide information and practical advice rather than it being led by health professionals."

Margaret Bardle, Diabetes Specialist Nurse, Chelmsford.

"The session run by Jill on psychological problems was extremely interactive and thought-provoking. It made me think about the perspective of the person with diabetes. Jill utilised excellent facilitation skills that focused the group on patient led outcomes during a consultation rather than those of the health professional. I would definitely recommend Jill to other health professionals who are planning to deliver the MERIT programme."

Helen Noakes, Diabetes Specialist Nurse, Lewisham.

"Our working relationship with Rosie is very much as a partnership. She has proved to be an excellent resource in providing a number of care planning workshops for trained and non-trained staff currently piloting the Year of Care project on behalf of the Department of Health. These workshops have been very useful for staff who are now having to work differently to support their patients to self-manage effectively. I have always found Rosie to be very professional and very skilled in pitching a session at the right level for the audience. It's a pleasure to work with her."

Bobby Driver, (former) Lead Diabetes Specialist Nurse, Tower Hamlets PCT.

"Over the last few years Rosie and Jill have facilitated many training events for volunteers at Diabetes UK. I would highly recommend them as the training is always of such a high standard and is so well received by our members who attend them."

Verity Steddon, Volunteer Development Manager, Diabetes UK.