User participation

Having been diagnosed with dementia at the age of 70, Brian and his wife June now actively participate in planning dementia care services in Gloucestershire. The film illustrates the range of activities they are involved in - developing a 'Living Well Handbook', giving talks and helping shape training tools. It also highlights how commissioners, support organisations and carers all have a role to play in enabling the person with dementia to share their knowledge and experience for the benefit of others.

Looks at how Hertsmere Primary Care Trust and West Herts community health council are developing an initiative to involve patients, carers, families and general practitioners. They invited a fifth of patients to get involved in a shadow patients' forum and was heartened by people's eagerness to give something back.

Reports on a project in Wolverhampton which reviewed short break (respite care) services for carers and the projects progress so far. The project focused on carers of people in the age range of 18-65, where provision of short breaks was seen to be most in need of development. The project used action research methods and included involvement of a number of carer support groups. Accounts from 50 carers on their short break experiences and aspirations were also collected.

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.

Having been diagnosed with dementia at the age of 70, Brian and his wife June now actively participate in planning dementia care services in Gloucestershire. The film illustrates the range of activities they are involved in - developing a ‘Living Well Handbook’, giving talks and helping shape training tools. It also highlights how commissioners, support organisations and carers all have a role to play in enabling the person with dementia to share their knowledge and experience for the benefit of others.

In this fourth of five articles on developing a benchmarking tool for person-centred care, Caroline Baker, Paul Edwards and Tracy Packer describe the last two factors: carer involvement and organisational strategy.

The systematic review methodology literature refers to the importance of involving stakeholders, including service users and carers, in the research. However, compared with other aspects of the methodology, this aspect of conducting systematic reviews is underdeveloped and the practice of involvement appears highly variable. This article draws on the experience of working with service users and carers in one systematic review to review the barriers to participation and the components of effective involvement.

NAViGO, a community interest company formed by service users and carers in partnership with mental health workers, has take over the running of all mental health services in northeast Lincolnshire. This article investigates this innovative example of service user and carer involvement in designing and delivering mental health services. The introduction of RESPECT training, which trains mental health workers to defuse difficult situations without using control and restraint techniques, is also discussed.

Health workers in Barnsley have found that training can help counter tokenism in user and carer involvement in the planning and delivering of services. Looks at the training course delivered to service users and carers which included: developing participants' skills in writing and evaluating standards; and de-mystifying jargon.