This project, commissioned by the Humber NHS Trust, is centred around Mr Matthew Prosser. Matthew has profound and complex needs. We think the approach and methods can offer benefits to other people in Matthew’s position.
Matthew’s parents, Tony and Tricia, planned the project together with Ken Pugh who has collated the material.
Together with key professionals, they prepared a multi-media, interactive, iPad-based guide to Matthew and his care needs. The professionals involved were really helpful. They were happy to give audio interviews about Matthew’s needs. The physiotherapist did a video demonstration about positioning Matthew. Everyone involved provided material for the book and helped to proof-read it.
The book will follow him wherever he goes, including hospital, to ensure that all staff working with him can quickly find out about the essential aspects of his care .. and what good practice means for him.
Just as important the guide will help staff to get to know and relate to him, creating a better prospect of a positive and engaged relationship.
The photographs, videos and audio interviews, together with relevant text have been collated using Apple’s iBooks Author software. The book, if necessary, could be shared with another person or a service that has an iPad or an Apple computer. There is no limit to how many books like this may be held on an iPad so, conceivably, a hospital ward could have an iPad with books about the needs of many people with complex needs or communication difficulties.
So that people can get a better impression of the project, we’ve included some screenshots from Matthew’s book below. You can click on these to get an enlarged view.
[A note on time and resources: There has to be an iPad on which to view the book. Matthew’s is an iPad mini 16GB which cost £259. We’re hoping the local NHS will reimburse the cost but that is up in the air at present. A service holding a number of books on its iPad might want to go for an iPad with more memory. Matthew’s book takes up 1.5GB of memory but that includes 29 pages, 17 videos, 5 quite lengthy audio interviews and over 800 photographs. Most books would probably be a lot smaller .. another book we’ve nearly finished is 600MB. About 40 hours time went into the creation of Matthew’s book but future books will take a lot less time now we’ve worked out what to do .. but don’t underestimate the time needed for video and audio editing in particular. The book was created on a Mac computer then loaded onto Matthew’s iPad using free software: iBooks Author. As things stand iBooks Author can only run on a Mac with system OS 10.7 or higher. You also need the iBooks app on your iPad which is free from the app store. (At present iBooks created by iBooks author won’t open on iPhones.) The other software used was Mac’s Garageband to edit the audio interviews and iMovie to edit the videos. These are relatively cheap from Apple’s app store for Mac. You need to factor in a bit of time to learn to use the software. I find the tutorial subscription service lynda.com very helpful in this respect. This costs around £17 per month to subscribe. All the photos, videos and audio interviews were done by non-experts using non-specialist equipment. Most of the videoing was done with the iPad, sometimes fixed to a tripod using an adaptor that cost £15 from Amazon. iBooks like Matthew’s can be shared electronically but with Matthew’s book being so large we found it difficult to use Dropbox to share the file. iBooks can be exported into PDF format to share with most people but you lose the interactive features like the video when you do this. Hope this helps but do get in touch using the Contact page if you need more information.]
Design for Care 
fantastic !!
I think it great, I feel it portrays Matthew has an equal citizen and that all we ask. It was very powerful
Amazing …inspirational….thank you
This is such a person centred, brilliant idea. Ive shared it with colleagues in the hope that we can do something similar for our young people
this is such an inspirational idea and shows how effective joint working between all the people involved in Matthews support can be. I am interested to know what systems are in place to show that all the grass roots supporters can demonstrate that they regularly familiarize themselves with the content of Matthews book.
Thanks for your support. We’ve just been focused on getting the book done so far. All the associated professionals have been very positive .. but we need to think about how this way of sharing information can be viewed more as the norm .. not just a novelty.
Ken Pugh
This is a great idea – it would be helpful to know what resources were needed to commission this so that others can present the idea and have an idea of the equipment and human resources involved.
A parent.
Thanks for your positive comments. I’ve added some information on resources which I hope helps .. but do get back if you need more information.
Ken Pugh
Looks brilliant – I know how hard you have all worked on this project – but it looks well-worth the effort. Let me know when you are ready to do the next one!
What a brilliant example of something that is truly person centred and will really support transition. I’m putting this on our next staff meeting agenda to discuss how we can take it forward. Thank you for sharing it.
I am about to embark on something similar for my daughter and seeing the way you have set this out has been most useful. Thank you so much for sharing this.