- The following advice and guidance is drawn from Implementation Science and our experience of training over 50 teams to date.
- It is designed to maximise the likelihood that teams applying for training will translate a training experience (that the large majority of trainees report upon very positively) into sustainable and effective changes in practice.
1. AMBIT training is only available to whole teams and not individuals. To some extent the training could be described as "experiential": by this we do not want to suggest that there are excruciating role plays or "encounter" exercises, but that it is important for the team to have a shared experience.
2. Before we accept teams for face-to-face training we invite them to follow the AMBIT Training Application Process, including the Pre-training team audit
(a) This is now seen as a key Stage 1 of the AMBIT training
(b) It is the equivalent of Marking the Task in terms of one of the key AMBIT practices, Thinking Together
(c) AMBIT is not just a set of theories and practices to be drilled into teams, but is rather an approach that works to develop teams that are actively involved in (co-producing) their own learning.
3. We use the information from the "Application form" developed by a team in its own work in Stage 1 (see Pre-training team audit) to help us determine the most appropriate teams to train, on the basis of the likely outcomes from training.
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Questions for consideration:
1. Is there a working TEAM to train?
- AMBIT addresses team-working practices, as well as providing access to manualized approaches to the face-to-face work itself, and approaches to the wider multi-agency network.
- It is not designed as an explicit and rigid approach to whole-organisational change or managerial restructuring, but as a method by which ‘working teams’ of practitioners can adopt and adapt evidence-oriented and sustainable methods of practice.
- It does require support from senior managers and organisational structures (see below).
- Experience suggests that the ideal size of such teams would be up to about 12 people (much larger, and it is likely that they would be subdivided either formally or informally into sub-teams) and that teams of less than 4 would struggle to make full use of the AMBIT approaches.
- AMBIT is being applied in a small number of In-Patient or Day-Hospital settings, where team sizes are larger than this, but the "entropy" effect of these larger teams may be counteracted by the geographical proximity of the workers in such settings.
2. Is there a clearly identified client group?
- This is really to emphasise the fact that AMBIT is a training for teams that are collectively engaged in delivering face-to-face work, in which individual practitioners (albeit that they may have some differentiation in their roles) will have common ground with each other.
- AMBIT explicitly acknowledges that in team trainings it is not a “given” that all team members are equally invested in the training.
- It is important, however, for there to be some shared notions of:
- The existing competencies and expertise within the team
- (Notwithstanding what the team is already doing well) a number of observable differences post-training that would indicate a successful outcome of the training (ie, a recognition that: "There are specific areas of practice, our experience of the work, and our clinical outcomes that this team think could be improved upon").
- In other words, a training outcome that is defined as "understanding more about Mentalization and how to use it in practice" would be seen as insufficiently specific to the ACTUAL EXPERIENCE of THIS team - it does not answer the question "Why do you feel that Mentalization might help you? And in what areas of your practice, experience and outcomes do you hope it might help you?"
4. Is there robust support from senior management for this training?
- Whilst AMBIT is not an explicit and rigidly defined approach to whole-organisational change, it does rely on being accommodated and supported by the wider systems and structures that manage the teams whose practice it seeks to influence.
- Evidence that senior management understands and supports the basic principles and practice of AMBIT is an important determinant of whether an AMBIT training is likely to be successful.