Abstract
BackgroundPeople participation teams are being established in many British NHS Trusts. They support active service user involvement in staff recruitment interviews, in evaluations of care and in programmes to improve services. No studies exploring experience of people involved in these activities are available in published mental health literature. In this project we explored benefits experienced and suggestions for improvement provided by service users.MethodsThe design, materials and methods of the project were developed in workshops including N = 15 service users. Three service user researchers were trained to carry out research interviews and qualitative analysis of the data. They were responsible for the management of the project on a day-to-day basis with weekly supervision by academic researchers and authored this paper. The service user researchers interviewed people with at least 1 year of experience of being involved in a People Participation team activities. Interviews were based on a topic guide, which was developed in workshops with a larger number of service users (N = 15) and explored reasons for joining the group, how participation helped recovery and suggestions for service improvement.ResultsFifteen service users were recruited and interviewed. Reasons for joining the group were identified: to “give back” to the service, to influence service change, curiosity, desire to meet like-minded people and to structure the day. Benefits reported included: sharing experiences, improving self-confidence, feeling valued, having a better understanding of services, overcoming personal fears, and developing better coping mechanisms for psychological difficulties. Being involved in People Participation activities helped to gain or refresh listening and interpersonal skills, communication skills, public speaking and creative skills and to develop better ways to cope with conflict. Suggestions for improvement were focused on changing staff attitudes, further promoting participation (e.g. through websites), simplifying payment procedures and establishing a moving-on support system to help people to access regular employment and gain full social inclusion.ConclusionsOur findings showed that People Participation initiatives can have benefits at least for some patients and help their recovery through a positive effect on self-confidence, providing room for feeling valued and for obtaining or refreshing personal skills. This provides support for the development and refinement of People Participation Teams and for larger scale research to test their effects.
Highlights
People participation teams are being established in many British NHS Trusts
Across the United Kingdom People Participation teams are being established in NHS Trusts in order to enable active participation of service users, carers and the public in NHS Trust activities
The funding application was developed by Giacco, Rohricht and Binfield, who is head of People Participation at East London NHS Foundation Trust (ELFT) and has previous lived experience of mental health problems and of using mental health services
Summary
People participation teams are being established in many British NHS Trusts They support active service user involvement in staff recruitment interviews, in evaluations of care and in programmes to improve services. No studies exploring experience of people involved in these activities are available in published mental health literature In this project we explored benefits experienced and suggestions for improvement provided by service users. The activities in which People Participation Teams facilitate the participation of service users include service planning, training to clinicians, audits, research and staff recruitment panels [1]. The involvement in these People Participation Groups of mental health service users has been anecdotally reported by many participants as beneficial. Service users are involved in research in an advisory capacity or as additional members of an established research group [4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
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