The research explores the views and experience of service users and service user organisations on how well they are able to link up with each other and enable their views to impact on service development. The barriers to service user networking and service user knowledge are discussed, as well as factors that increase their effectiveness. Issues relating to diversity and the particular exclusions and marginalisation which some groups of service users can face are looked at.

An increasingly important idea in public policy is the involvement of service users in the development of those services. This research aimed to find out how much user involvement initiatives have actually achieved, aside from the rhetoric.

The project took place nationally, and was based on a user-controlled research approach. Individual interviews and group discussions were undertaken. 126 service users from different areas took part in the research. Two extra discussion groups were held with black and minority ethnic service users and one with a group of women who had experience of alcohol problems.

It is concluded that successfully mainstreaming service user knowledge is closely linked to networking at individual and organisational levels, and that the rhetoric of user involvement within health and social care is concealing the relatively undeveloped status of much of the participation activity being undertaken currently in the UK.

Joseph Rowntree Foundation
Phone: +44 1904 629241
info@jrf.org.uk

01/01/2006

Fran Branfield and Peter Beresford

research

Urban Policy > Social inclusion & integration > Quality of life

Health