User Involvement

Comensus Project
Organisations involved: University of Central Lancashire
Aims:

To find out where and in what ways service users and carers are already involved in the work of the Faculty.
To develop a team of service users and carers, supported by Comensus staff, who will work with us to find ways of involving service users and carers in the day to day work of the Faculty. Some members of this group may also get involved in teaching, research or other activities.
To find the funds, in the third year, to start up a social firm. This firm, which will be independent of the University, will employ and train service users and carers to provide service-user/carer expertise to the health, social care and education sectors.

The Practice Learning Taskforce was a Department of Health funded initiative, 2003-2006, designed to increase the quantity, quality and diversity of practice learning for the social work degree.
Several projects considered how service users and carers could participate in assessment. The link is to a series of Capturing the Learning guides. The 'Active participation in practice learning' guide is those wanting to develop service user and carer led organisations' contribution to the practice based learning and education.

(Medicine) Identifying good practice in user involvement in medical and dental education
Funded mini project
Organisations involved: University of Newcastle upon Tyne; University of Leeds; University of Durham; University of Warwick; Peninsula Medical School; St George's, University of London.
Aims:

Update a literature review on patient involvement in health care education.
Survey current practice in UK medical and dental schools; and appropriate stakeholders from within the social work and policy, and mental health communities (note that we would have liked to involve users and carers but consider that this might be financially out of scope for this mini-project; funding for this is being sought elsewhere).
Hold two seminars bringing together key stakeholders including representatives from each of the 5 schools, and others known to be active in this fields, including people from the lay/user community.

(Medicine) Role of patients as teachers in undergraduate medical education
Funded mini project
Organisations involved: University of Leeds.
Aims:

Interviews of the different focus groups and concurrent systematic review of the literature.
Analysis of the qualitative interview data.
Dissemination of the results of the study.

This project will bring together two Universities who have D.Clin.Psychol. programmes to pilot some approaches to embedding user/carer involvement in this training, evaluate the impact on trainees' entry onto and experience on the programmes and disseminate findings to other programmes.

(Mental Health) Centre of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Mental Health
Funded mini project
Organisations involved: University of Birmingham.
Aims:

To enhance and expand the delivery, evaluation and dissemination of innovative, interdisciplinary mental health programmes within higher education and the mental health sector, nationally and internationally.
To promote mental health teaching and learning in higher education underpinned by a commitment to interdisciplinary working and learning between professional groups including service users and their carers.

To improve the experience of people who use social care by developing and promoting knowledge about good practice in the sector.
To develop resources using knowledge gathered from diverse sources and a broad range of people and organisations, which we share freely, supporting those working in social care and empowering service users.