People love training from Born at the Right Time. Our training evaluations are consistently good immediately after the session. Our goal though goes beyond good feelings after the session to helping services run more efficiently, practitioners feel more equipped, and families experience better outcomes.   

In March 2024 the Children’s Community Occupational Therapy (OT) team at Evelina London Children’s Healthcare accessed whole team training from Born at the Right Time. Our signature ‘Communication and Co-production’ course was delivered in person to 19 participants.  

Five months later we asked the team some simple questions using a Microsoft Form to find out what’s different now. 10 responses were received (some participants had left the trust by this point). All respondents said they were satisfied with the knowledge they gained; six were very satisfied and four were satisfied. No one sat on the fence. No one said “meh.” 

Understanding and confidence. 

All the participants rated that they had gained a good or comprehensive understanding of parent carer experience, factors underpinning challenging situations and difficult conversations, limiting structures, ways to connect with parents and best practices in communication and co-production.   

Confidence followed suit: most felt very or quite confident about asking parents their priorities, tackling barriers to communication, and navigating difficult conversations. 

The team’s likelihood to recommend the course averaged 9.2/10.   
Where practice feels better, not just different 

Good communication, working together and co-production are big ideas woven into policy across health, education and social care. It’s harder to notice the small places where those ideas land. There is frequently an implementation gap between policy and practice. The follow up evaluations show that the training is impacting clinician’s practice well beyond the initial session.  

The team reported moderate to significant improvements across face to face, telephone, follow up and written communication because of the course.  Some participants described their shift in practice as ‘dramatic’ as regards team culture, co-productive working practices, shared decision making, and personalised care.  

The “this is what I’m doing differently now” moments 

This is our favourite part—the practical, tangible examples of changes in practice where we can see the rhetoric become the reality. 

  • Checking in first, not last. One OT said they now pause to ‘check with parents about feelings and whether the appointment works for them’, not just whether the diary does.  
  • Trauma aware listening. Another OT talked about ‘understanding the impact of trauma on parent carers’—especially when a parent looks “switched off”—and ‘adapting recommendations to meet them where they are’. That’s skill; that’s care.  
  • ‘Don’t Call Me Mum’. One person described a “significant shift”: ‘always asking for preferred names, centring family priorities’, and adding cultural/religious inclusion prompts to assessment forms so engagement isn’t left to chance. That’s building inclusion into the system, not as a footnote.  
  • Choice as standard. A colleague who hadn’t attended the original training (new to the Trust) still aligned beautifully with the ethos: offer choices—time, location, how we communicate, who’s involved—so the parent carer stays at the centre.   
  • Clearer letters, kinder processes. The team ‘rewrote “not accepted” letters’ to improve transparency and options, and kicked off a service development project that  ‘asks parents directly about their experience’.  

At the end of the day, “impact” isn’t just a data point on a spreadsheet or a percentage in an evaluation. It’s a clinician pausing before a difficult phone call to consider a parent’s perspective. It’s a shared decision made in a conversation that makes a family feel like partners driving things forward together rather than unwilling passengers forced on an unwanted trip.  

The Evelina London OT team didn’t just attend a course; they took those ideas and wove them into the fabric of their daily work. They’ve shown that when we invest in communication and co-production, the environment doesn’t just feel different—it feels better. For the practitioners, for the service, and most importantly, for the families walking through their doors. 

Bring Born at the Right Time to your service. If the Evelina London OT team’s experience resonates with you, we’d love to help your staff feel more equipped and your families feel more heard. To find out more about our training that is rooted in lived experience, informed by research and delivering solutions. Click here to find out more about our training and consultancy work or email training@bornattherighttime.com.