In this article, Susan Latter, Living Well Programme Team Lead at Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust, shares how her team is integrating the My Future Care Handbook into their Living Well Programme to support people living with long-term health conditions.
We love how they recognise that proactive decision-making and planning can bring peace of mind and improve wellbeing—not just for the future, but in the here and now.
About the Living Well Programme
The Living Well Programme provides a free 6-week self-management course to help people in West Sussex and Brighton & Hove living with any long-term health conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, asthma, arthritis, multiple sclerosis, depression, anxiety, back pain and chronic fatigue syndrome. Each course is led by fully trained (but not medically qualified) volunteer tutors who themselves are living with a long-term health condition. It is delivered both online and in-person to meet people’s different needs.
How are you integrating the My Future Care Handbook into the Living Well Programme?
Alongside support with managing a long-term condition, our course includes support with goal setting, problem solving, decision making, communication skills accessing NHS services and working with your healthcare team. The My Future Care Handbook fits naturally alongside these topics.
Our course leaders have received My Future Care training on how to introduce the Handbook and its themes and they have started to do so in our live programmes.
We’ve already received some early feedback from a course participant who said: “This book is great, it’s really made me think. I haven’t filled it all in yet, but I plan to set time aside as part of my goal setting.”
What kind of challenges do the people you are supporting face when it comes to making plans for future care and later life?
Many people are unaware of the importance of advance care planning or may not fully understand their options. The My Future Care Handbook offers clear, jargon-free guidance on these options and outlines the key steps to take.
Given the unpredictable nature of long-term health conditions, anticipating future care needs can feel challenging and scary, so people often bury their heads in the sand and ignore it. The Handbook encourages individuals to simply make a start with the information they have and reassures them that plans can be adjusted over time.
For those who may find large planning tasks overwhelming or energy-draining, the Handbook breaks the process down into manageable steps, allowing them to move forward at their own pace with essential information to hand.
How do you hope the My Future Care Handbook will help you meet these people’s needs?
At the end of each session, participants are invited to share a goal for the week ahead and feedback on how they got on at the beginning of the following session. I hope that people will feel confident to set future care planning goals and use the My Future Care Handbook independently to follow these through using the tools and resources it contains.
Feedback and evaluation of the programme has shown that six months after completing the course participants had greater confidence in managing their condition, more energy, improved quality of life and psychological wellbeing and improved partnerships with doctors. We hope they will also start reporting greater peace of mind knowing that they have stronger future care plans in place.
Feeling motivated by Susan’s insights? Could you incorporate future care planning support into your group or service?
Take advantage of our free training and ongoing support programme. Our online training will equip your team to help the people you work with make an action plan and see it through, using the My Future Care Handbook as a source of information and structure for the conversation. Handbooks are available free in certain areas (thanks to area-specific funding), otherwise bulk prices are available.
