Service user involvement: Making it happen in health and social care education

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Service user involvement Making it happen in
health and social care education

• Project co-ordinators
• Anna Walsh Glenda Cook
• On behalf of the
• Service user/Carer Sub Committee

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A new agenda in Education

• Service users/carers partners in professional
  education promoted by professional bodies
  (e.g.SCIE, 2004 NMC 2005)
• Taking place within a wider policy framework of
  public involvement in policy development, service
  planning and delivery in the United kingdom
• Service user/carer involvement across a range of
  programmes in HECs
• Guidance on how to involve service users/carers
  in professional education is limited beyond
  Mental Health and Social Work Learning Disability

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Aim of the research

• To develop a tool-kit to facilitate service
  user participation in curriculum development and
  curriculum delivery in health and social care
  education.

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Outcomes

• To share collective knowledge, experiences and
  ideas of service users, academics and
  administration who have been active in service
  user/carer participation in health and social
  care education.
• To examine the skills and support required to
  contribute to University education programmes
  from the service users perspective.
• To map teaching and learning approaches which are
  currently used to integrate service user,
  professional and technical knowledge across
  academic levels and across the organisation.
• To use the research results to develop a
  tool-kit that provides guidance to service
  users and University staff about participation in
  health and social care programmes.

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Study design

• 2 interrelated stages
• Stage one Developing an understanding of
  existing practices and what needs to be in place
  to optimize service user involvement in
  curriculum development and delivery
• Stage two Tool-kit development

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Stage one

• Service users/carers (n 6), were
  invited to group or individual interviews to
  explore their experiences of participating and
  in health and social care education.
• Academic (n 11 ) and administrative (n 4)
  staff also participated in interviews regarding
  the same topic .

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Topics examined

• Involvement of service users/carers in modules
  and /programmes
• Type and range of roles and activity
• What helped and what hindered participation
• If involvement was a long-term commitment how
  was it sustained
• How service user/carer participation influenced
  the planning and/or development of
  modules/programmes
• Preparation, support and resources
• Recommendations to enable service users/carers to
  fully participate in the shaping of health and
  social care education

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Preliminary analysis

• Why involve service users/carers?
• Ethical imperative (right thing to do)
• Requirement from professional / regulatory body
• I think one of the things that is constantly in
  the back of my mind is that there is a danger of
  inviting clients in for the sake of
  rhetoric..there is a danger of tokenism, theres
  rhetoric, theres big dangers of doing it just
  for the sake of ticking the box and saying Yes
  we are doing this.

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How .

• Academic staff recruit service users/carers to
  programmes and modules in various ways
• Direct personal approach tends to be people
  known to them
• Indirect approach through service colleagues,
  through relevant groups
• Issues
• Defining who a service user is (patients,
  practitioner,
• service organisations)
• Who to recruit? (Selection / representation)
• How to continually recruit new service
  users/carers to
• programmes and work with existing participants

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What are service users/carers involved in ?

• Service users/carers are involved in a range of
  type and level of curriculum activities
• Selection
• Teaching
• Design
• Assessment
• Committee work
• Placement ? Are we optimising this .

Their experiences are really important and they
have got voices that should be listened to"
Bringing a different perspective the things
that they say are not those that we would
necessarily pick up on they give a message
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Needs .

• Achieving a balance between the needs of service
  users/carers, staff and the organisation
• Large student groups can be daunting
• How can parity of experience be attained across
  multiple deliveries
• Cost of multiple deliveries
• Recognising demands of service user/carer
  involvement in workloads
• Support for participation
• Information (Briefing / debriefing)
• Competence and expertise in facilitating learing
• Feedback
• Issues
• Is there a need to develop alternative strategies
  (Technology) to
• access the voice of the service user/carer?
• Does involvement face to face participation?
• Does this need to be at University ?

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• Benefits of involvement
• To the service user/carer
• Having a voice ( particularly marginalised
  groups)
• Esteem associated with participating in
  University education
• Developing skills
• To the University programmes
• Enhancing the quality and range of education
  provision
• Meeting regulatory body requirements

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Current challenges

• Conceptualising service user/carer involvement
• Accessibility
• Support lack of recognition re workload
• Understanding reward - payment, impact and
  systems/ recognition
• Funding for involvement
• Expenses
• Feedback
• Measuring impact

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Stage two

• Developing a toolkit to support involvement
• Do we need another toolkit/guide?
• The Is framework to facilitate the involvement
  of older people in health, social care and
  housing
• (Reed and Cook, 2006)

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Relevance to University education

• Intention
• Negotiation of aims and outcomes of service
  user/carer contribution to education
• Addressing multiple agendas
• Exploration of type and level of involvement
• Inclusion
• Commitment to include service users/carers
• Supporting different types and range of
  participation
• Overcoming barriers to inclusion (e.g language/
  access / payment)
• Ensuring resources are available for
  participation
• Signposting resources - knowing what resources
  are available and how to access them
• Information
• Sharing of information between all participants
• Accurate, comprehensive, timely and topic-based
  information
• Addressing the information needs of service
  users/carers

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Relevance to University education

• Infrastructure
• Development of an infrastructure to support
  different levels and types of involvement
  (involvement takes place primarily during
  delivery)
• Strategic development of the education
  infrastructure for participation in
  decision-making processes
• Leadership to facilitate high quality
  participation
• Influence
• Power and control in decision-making processes
  (presence on a committee is not the same as
  power)
• How is the service user/carer voice heard within
  the University
• Clarifying what and how service users/carers
  influence in the curriculum
• Impact
• Assessing outcomes
• Evaluating outcomes from multiple perspectives
• Giving recognition to service user/carer
  contribution
• Giving and receiving feedback

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Moving forward

• Complete analysis/draft toolkit
• Feedback from stakeholders
• Highlight issues to service user/carer sub
  committee - 28.6.06