User participation

The model of assertive outreach is one of the most internationally researched areas of community mental healthcare. An assertive outreach team at a mental health trust developed a handbook on the model, involving contributions from service users, carers, local clinicians and the voluntary sector. This article outlines the process of developing the handbook, and summarises its content and user feedback.

This film details the requirements on universities teaching the social work degree to involve service user and carers in their courses. It also sets out the benefits that result from students working with service users and carers, with users and carers describing how this leads to improved practice and how students explaining the value of learning about the realities of people's lives. The film will be of interest to social worker educators, students on social work courses, people working more broadly in co-production/participation and service users and carers.

Reports on the development of a joint mental health strategy for older people in a central London Borough. The project brought together clinicians and practitioners from a variety of settings, the voluntary sector, and users and carers. The aim of the project was to develop a shared philosophy of care based on promoting independence and from this to identify the components of a spectrum of care that would meet the wide range of needs of elders with mental ill health. The borough had high levels of deprivation, unemployment and poor housing.

The concept of care has attracted considerable interest and there has been growing attention both to the needs of carers and how they may sometimes conflict with those of service users. Draws on initial research findings to examine experiences of care in mental health for men and women and for carers and users.

This article describes how Thurrock Council Social Services Department and South Essex Mental Health and Community Care NHS Trust launched a joint initiative to develop an integrated service strategy and implementation plan for older people's mental health services in Thurrock. The main principles of the approach were: service user and carer involvement, the active participation of mental health professionals working directly with service users and carers, representatives from all key agencies involved in the planning process.

It is frequently asserted that the views of patients or service users should inform the structure and delivery of health and social care services. In the UK, patient participation, the expertise of service users and user involvement in the design and outcomes of research have been repeatedly emphasized as producing services which are more responsive, better coordinated and less stigmatizing. The NHS has highlighted the importance of involving service users in education and training. This article reports on user and carer views about learning disability nursing.

User or carer involvement is often seen as intrinsically worth while; but if such involvement is a good thing in itself, it would not matter whether changes resulted from it. However, most people argue for user or carer involvement because they think some useful change will follow as a consequence. Being involved can benefit users or carers both personally (for example, by empowering them or increasing their social contacts) and practically (for example, by enabling them to earn money or learn new skills).

The Health and Social Care Act 2012 introduced significant amendments to the NHS Act 2006. This guidance supports two legal duties, requiring clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and commissioners in NHS England to enable patients and carers to participate in planning, managing and making decisions about their care and treatment through the services they commission; and to enable effective public participation in the commissioning process, so that services provided reflect the needs of local people.

Increasingly there is greater emphasis on user/carer involvement in the delivery of mental health care. There are five levels of participation from none at all to partnership and optimal involvement. A two-year pilot steering group was established by a health authority in December 2000 and criteria for independent evaluation agreed. These included the context, data collection, analysis and report, and recommendations based on the findings to increase user/carer involvement in all aspects of mental health service delivery.

Joanne Schofield and Jack Buckley Mellor explain the value of having a carer available to offer support to other carers with relatives on a continuing care ward