Participation

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the attitude and understanding of research among people with Huntington's disease (HD) and their carers, as well as their experiences of research participation. Design/methodology/approach: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 participants with HD (ranging from pre-symptomatic to moderately severe HD) and ten carers.

Service user and carer involvement in social work education is now well established since its inception as a compulsory requirement in the social work curriculum in the United Kingdom in 2003. Since then, there have been many examples of how such involvement has been approached by education providers. Nevertheless, one of the key obstacles and challenges in this field continues to centre on the need to achieve non-tokenistic user involvement which cements the engagement of service users and carers at the heart of social work education.

This video looks at the practical arrangements that need to be made around accessibility, support and payments to ensure that users and carers can participate in social work education and be rewarded for their input. The film will be useful for social work students, lecturers, tutors, social worker educators, people working more broadly in co-production/participation and service users and carers.

The guidance looks at best practice for local commissioning partnerships to provide services to support carers of individuals with a drug problem. The document also covers how best to include carers (where appropriate) in the drug treatment of the individuals they are concerned for – citing the evidence base that demonstrates involving carers can improve outcomes for users. The guidance as a whole is predicated on the assumption that commissioners and services providers involve and consult carers in every stage of service design and delivery.

This article will reflect on the experience of undertaking a participatory action research influenced study within a module of a social work degree programme. In doing so it will touch on some of the literature associated with student, service user and carer involvement in qualifying programmes, and in particular on research and module design. It will outline the history of service user and carer involvement in respect of a specific module within a singular degree course.

The increasing focus on the involvement of people who use health and social care services and their carers in developing services and in social work education has the potential to bring significant change. This book examines the challenges in enabling people who are `experts by experience' to participate in an agenda which is largely dominated by 'top-down' managerial practices. Several themes run through the book.

Examined were the impact of exercise barriers and carer attitudes regarding exercise outcomes on the exercise participation of adults with Down syndrome (DS). The sample included 44 adults age 30 years and older with DS and mild to moderate intellectual disability and their carers (family members or staff). Measures included personal characteristics of the adults with DS (age, level of adaptive behavior, and health status), carer perceived outcomes of exercise for people with DS, socio-emotional barriers, and access barriers to exercising.

In this video representatives from four universities describe the ways in which service users and carers participate in social work degree courses. It looks at the benefits user and carer involvement brings to the courses and how they gain from the experience of participation. The film will be useful for  is relevant to social worker educators, social work students, people working more broadly in co-production/participation and service users and carers.

Context: In 2003 the Department of Health introduced a new qualification for social workers. Previously a diploma, for the first time the social work qualification became a three-year degree course, a move which reflected the difficulty and professionalism of the job. Also for the first time, universities and colleges offering the degree were required to involve service users and carers in the design and delivery of the programme.