Following this co-facilitators and programme lead carried out a thematic analysis to explore the service users’ experience of the programme.
Three themes were extracted; ‘Experience of Change,’ ‘Ingredients of Change’ and ‘More and Less.’ These related to the internal processes that appeared to be instrumental to change, the external factors that were pivotal in developing the service users’ understanding of their fire-setting, and the aspects that the service users found helpful and areas for improvement. These results have since been used to inform service development at the hospital.
To disseminate these results and promote the excellent work being carried out at Cygnet Hospital Stevenage, an application to present the findings at the Division of Forensic Psychology at their Annual Conference was made and accepted. The event took place in Bristol on 14th June 2017 where Laura Porter (Assistant Psychologist) and Dr Victoria Vallentine (Principal Clinical Psychologist) presented the results.
The presentation was a big success; there was a good turnout to the talk with positive feedback from other delegates both on the quality of the presentation and on the work presented and its future applications.