Becoming a Bevan Exemplar: Driving Change with Mini MOVE

26th July 2022

Mini MOVE is an adapted version of the MOVE Programme (MOVE) that is designed for use in early intervention with children aged 2-5 years. Mini MOVE maintains the focus of independent mobility and the structured team approach of MOVE, which is used successfully in 140 settings across the UK, but adapts the assessment framework to suit the needs of younger children. This project will enable us to fully develop this adapted assessment framework and to establish a new delivery model that is more appropriate for children and families accessing mainstream early years settings or not yet in education, thus providing us with an exciting opportunity to reach a new group of children who do not have access to MOVE at the moment.

The Bevan Exemplar programme is open to health and social care teams across Wales, and, more recently, to third sector organisations, like us, that can be accepted as supporting partners. The Bevan Exemplar programme’s theme this year is “Doing Things Differently for a Prudent, Sustainable Recovery” and it aims to support projects, like ours, that deliver innovation across the health and social care sector in Wales, which we can then roll out nationally.

This 12-month project marks an exciting new development in our mission to ensure every child with additional physical needs has the chance to learn independent movement. By identifying children appropriate for MOVE at an earlier age, introducing this approach right from diagnosis, and working collaboratively with the whole team around the child from the beginning of their interaction with health and education services, we can achieve greater health outcomes for the child and significant cost savings for services over the child’s lifetime. By becoming a Bevan Exemplar, we will reach many more children that could benefit from Mini MOVE’s support in the years to come.

We are also excited to use this opportunity to further explore the secondary outcomes experienced by parents, carers, and family members of children on MOVE. A key benefit of MOVE is its strengths-based approach that showcases to families all of the skills their child already has and what they could develop next. We know this leads to the primary outcomes of increased self-esteem for the child and increased involvement from the family; however, there is more work we can do to understand the impact that this positive strengths-based approach has on families and on the parenting journey. The Bevan Exemplar process, and our collaboration with the ABUHB Children’s Physiotherapy Team, will give us the support and resources we need to be able to explore these secondary outcomes more deeply.  

Making this project a reality meant that we had to work out a plan of action. At the beginning of October 2021, we met the Aneurin Bevan Children’s Physiotherapy Team at Serennu Children’s Centre in Newport, where we spent a valuable day scoping the aims and plan for the pilot project with the first Mini MOVE cohort. This joint approach enabled us to consider ways of developing the project that we hadn’t previously thought about. From this meeting it’s already clear to see the benefits of collaboration between MOVE Europe and the ABUHB Children’s Physiotherapy Team: our complementary expertise in health, education and delivery models will support the development of a project that has the greatest chance of success and deliver the most positive outcomes for the young people it can benefit.

Looking forward to the next steps of this project, we are reflecting on a quote shared with us on our first Bevan Exemplar networking day:

“An idea is only 10% of the solution. Anyone can have an idea, but it takes hard work to put those ideas into practice and to truly deliver change”

Here at MOVE Europe, we are always considering new ways to improve and expand our work, and we are committed to seeing our ideas through to reality so that we reach as many young people as possible who can benefit from our input. We are so excited to have been chosen as a Bevan Exemplar and we look forward to sharing our progress over the coming months.

Interested in finding out more about Mini MOVE?