'Closing the gap'--a partnership approach to community care education for long term conditions.

Aim: The aim of the project/evaluation was to establish a Community of Practice (CoP) with the purpose of enhancing the skills of the workforce and developing learning resources to improve service delivery for people with long-term conditions.

Background: International and national policy drivers espousing new community-based inter-agency models of delivery have led to rapid transformation of services for people with long-term conditions. Many in the workforce lack the skills required to respond to the increased acuity of patients or function within a fully integrated, inter-agency service.

Design: A partnership involving a community provider, a commissioner and a University initiated a 'CoP' project with the aim of promoting knowledge-exchange between academic and practice staff. The CoP was the vehicle for addressing gaps in knowledge and skills of the academic and practice workforce. An evaluation of the CoP was conducted after 1 year.

Method: The evaluation sought to explore how the CoP shaped the project's impact, the resultant changes in clinical practice and how involvement influenced participants' knowledge of new models/approaches. The CoP was made up of 34 academic and practice staff and was a forum for building collective knowledge that would shape practice. Qualitative data collection involved a focus group, questionnaire survey and notes of the CoP meetings.

Findings: Participants became more conversant with integrated models of care and identified and addressed gaps in knowledge and skills including real world complexity to reduce escalation of care. Participants found a well-facilitated CoP to be a supportive and effective vehicle for helping a workforce change process.

Conclusion: A well-organised Community of Practice, delivered as an inter-agency partnership, was found to be very effective in contributing to a better-prepared workforce. With targeted investment a facilitated CoP appears to be a useful vehicle for addressing workforce needs in complex and challenging circumstances.