Changemakers Spotlight - Paul Martin
Welcome to Changemakers Spotlight
In short, the aim of Changemakers Spotlight is to develop and share insight that showcases ‘how’ great things happen and profile some of the people leading change across the health and social services sector.
As an organisation, we have been working hard over the last couple of years to share insights from our team across the health and social services sectors. So far, the response has been great. Changemakers Spotlight will take this a step further and bring you insight from people that we admire, respect and want to learn from.
Why? We are continually inspired by the impact our partner organisations are having, but it’s the process of ‘how’ they create change that really fascinates us. We think that by profiling the great work of people in the health and social services sector it will help to inspire, educate and re-calibrate.
For now, we’ve settled on the concept of a Q&A style blog format but will look to evolve as we progress to podcasts and video.
Without further delay, we’d like to introduce Paul Martin as the focus of our first edition of Changemakers Spotlight. Paul is currently Executive Manager (Mental Health, Alcohol and Other Drugs) at Brisbane North PHN. Having worked with Paul previously (as a peer but also in a consultancy capacity) we believe that he is positioned really well to bring value to our PHN and NFP readers.
In previous interactions with Paul, we’ve always admired his pragmatic approach to tackling complexity and given the rise of PHNs as a regional commissioner of health services we know that he will give great insight into how he shoots to deliver impact individually, in a team and within an organisation.
Paul Martin is the focus of this edition of Changemakers Spotlight. He currently works at BNPHN as Executive Manager (Mental Health, Alcohol and Other Drugs).
Tell us a little about yourself and your role at Brisbane North PHN…
Are you able to give us some insight into what led you, either professionally or personally, to such a role?
I have worked or volunteered for community organisations for 30 years starting in HIV, sexual health and the LGBTI community and focusing on health promotion and community development. Following the de-funding of the Queensland AIDS Council/Healthy Communities by the Newman government I was successful in being appointed as System Reform Lead for Partners in Recovery at Metro North Brisbane Medicare Local. I’ve now been with Brisbane North PHN for 6 years in a number of roles, currently as an Executive Manager. Mental health and, alcohol and drugs (AoD) have always been part of the mix in HIV, sexual health and LGBTI health and I’m glad to now be focusing on mental health and AoD issues for the whole community in Brisbane North. PHNs are one of the few remaining organisations that are still funded to undertake population level health promotion and health system reform. Brisbane North PHN does this with a strong community development and collective impact approach which aligns with my background.
At an individual level, what do you see as your purpose within your organisation?
My purpose is to help create and maintain an environment where teams (internal and external to the PHN) can get on and do what they need to do to respond to the health and wellbeing needs of the community. This means bringing people together to agree on shared priorities and actions (including people with a lived experience), securing resources to deliver, communicating with all relevant stakeholders, monitoring and evaluating our actions and ensuring our work is compliant with funders and quality systems.
How do you see your role in leading change in the sectors and communities you work in?
There are many competing priorities in the mental health, suicide prevention and AoD sectors, with communities, providers, funders, researchers and policy makers all having a stake. My role is to first listen and understand those perspectives and then bring all that together, and with those stakeholders agree what we want to achieve together locally and how we will do it. It’s then keeping that vision and shared agreement in mind and drawing together and marshalling the various strands of activity across the region that contribute to us meeting our vision.
Let’s talk about your team…
How do you plan for meaningful change? How do you steer your team through change?
Change is always with us, whether it’s a cycle of continuous quality improvement, changes in Ministers and governments or staff coming and going. We have to be open to change at all times. This means we need to have a clear vision of what we are trying to achieve, a set of principles to inform how we will go about achieving the vision and the criteria we will use to judge whether we have been successful. Then whenever change is proposed, we can test it against our vision and principles. If it helps us deliver our vision and aligns with our principles, then it’s likely to be a good change.
While some change is outside of our control, we should build in regular review cycles. For us at the PHN this is the regional plan ‘Planning for Wellbeing’ and our contracts with providers, which are substantially reviewed approximately every 3 years.
What has been your team’s biggest challenge? How did you learn from this?
Our biggest challenge has been tight timelines and new/changing priorities. When responsibility for mental health, suicide prevention and AoD treatment came to PHNs, it meant getting a new team of people together, assessing the needs of the local community, procuring services and planning for the longer term (i.e. the regional plan). All within a 6 to 12 month period. As things have gone on, new state and commonwealth government initiatives have come along which have needed to be fitted in to the local service system. We have learnt to have a clear vision of what we are trying to achieve and a core set of principles about the way we go about our work. We have also learnt to be flexible and see change as a possibility for improvement. And we have learnt to work with each other, not in isolation, as everyone has something they can contribute.
What is your/your team’s problem solving process?
Start by defining the problem. Then understand what factors contribute to the problem. Go out and talk with people and their understanding of the problem and possible solutions. Others have probably encountered the same problem or similar, so what can research tell us, past experience or other regions in Australia or overseas. Bring a bunch of people with a stake in the issue together to talk all this through. Together identify those things that can have the biggest positive effect on the problem and which we have an ability to influence. Agree to a plan, responsibilities, timelines and resources. Deliver, monitor, evaluate, learn and improve.
Let’s talk about your organisation…
How do you engage with stakeholders (community and sector) around program design and how does this improve service delivery?
The PHN facilitates a number of partnership groups, which bring together stakeholders to develop and implement the joint regional plan ‘Planning for Wellbeing’ and advise the PHN on commissioning. These groups all include two consumer representatives and two carer representatives. Depending on the nature and complexity of the program design, we then undertake specific and varied co-design activities. This often includes involving members of the Peer Participation in Mental Health Services (PPIMS) Network, who are a network of 300 people with lived experience in our region who want to be involved in service design. The results are then brought back to the partnership group to develop final recommendations. This approach helps to ensure that the perspectives of potential users of the service and providers of the service are incorporated, leading to a more successful service.
How do you ensure that you design programs that actually work? What is the program design process within your organisation?
As a regional commissioning body, we play a unique role in program design. Usually, the funder (e.g. Department of Health) sets out broad program guidelines for the use of the funds. The PHN then enters into a co-design process with people with a lived experience, providers and other stakeholders, to refine the guidelines to suit the needs and service system of our local community. The PHN then uses this co-design process to inform our procurement approach, usually through an Invitation to Tender. The Invitation to Tender sets out the regional specifications for the service/activity, but usually there is room for providers to outline in their tender their specific approach to delivering the service.
In 2019 we ran a co-design process to scope the specification for integrated service hubs for people with severe mental illness. This included the development of a number of personas of people with severe mental illness. Using the personas, stakeholders identified the needs of potential users of the hubs, drafted the elements the hubs would need to be successful and then tested this ‘solution’ on the original personas to check the hubs would work for them. This information was then used to develop the Invitation to Tender.
How do you measure the impact you make? (and what are your greatest challenges?)
As a PHN we are trying to move to more outcomes based commissioning. We know the outcomes we are trying to help people achieve, but developing indicators to track the achievement of outcomes is very difficult.
What indicators are reasonably in the power of funded providers to effect?
How do we know the change was because of the service provided, not other factors?
How can we efficiently collect outcome data, so that data collection is not more expensive than the service provided?
We are working with all PHN funded MHAOD providers to develop a program logic for their service and from this develop an evaluation logic. This will include quantitative data (mostly from national minimum data sets) and qualitative information, including PREMS and PROMS.
How do you communicate about your impact?
The PHN publishes a quarterly newsletter ‘Recovery’ which profiles the work of the PHN and funded providers and other partners. We also host www.mymentalhealth.org.au which contains a range of information about mental health services in the region. More widely the PHN has a number of newsletters, website and social media platforms to which we contribute. We also host (often jointly with the HHS) regional interagency meetings, forums and expos. As a lead site for mental health and suicide prevention we participate in a number of independent national evaluations and share our learnings across the PHN network. We are also a member of a number of peak bodies at state and federal level
And that's a wrap for Volume 1 of Changemakers Spotlight. We’d like to take the opportunity to thank Paul for accepting our offer to take on the task of sharing his insights across the Health and Social Services Sector. Paul has covered a lot of ground but we know that this will give peer PHNs and service providers good insight into the processes that Paul uses individually, with his team and within his organisation.
Paul, thank-you.