Building on Firm Foundations Conference, Leeds, 19th March

Service User Involvement Workshop

Key challenges and responses

1. Timing was a key challenge, but crucial to get right

If activities were undertaken too quickly there was concern that clients would still be in crisis or

were unlikely to have seen the benefit of the service. Undertaken too late, many thought that clients

would want to ‘get on with my life’. It was felt that reawakening difficult memories might cause

relapse, or alternatively the time gap might ‘seem like a lifetime’ to young people who would have

little recall about the service they received. It was also acknowledged that views about criminal

justice services could often change over time.

A staged approach would work best, thinking carefully about which questions it is appropriate and

helpful to ask at which times. Pat emphasised that user involvement activities could be empowering

and support long-term recovery – if they are done well. No one should be forced to get involved and

appropriate (peer / mentor) support for involvement must be made available. A variety of options for

how to get involved is also helpful, since not everyone wants to talk about their experiences at public

meetings. It was suggested that consent forms signed in custody could also include a tick box

establishing permission to be contacted later for involvement activities.

2. Getting people engaged in the process

Many attendees had struggled to get people engaged in the process. Surveys had frequently had low

response rates. Mental health trusts and criminal justice agencies could be resistant to using new

media (e.g. twitter) and there were often regulations on use which could impede creativity.

Challenges included the need to engage different interest groups, e.g. parents, and identifying those

clients who have been missed by the service. The short-term nature of the intervention, transience

of the client group and the multiple care pathways with different ‘end destinations’ for clients also

presented a challenge.

Greater success had been found by undertaking the surveys over the phone or face-to-face. Freepost

responses and text message surveys (where the text was free) were other options, as was the use of

a ‘scratch card’ for feedback in custody suites. To involve different groups, different methods would

be needed (parents and their children likely to respond to different methods). Peer-led recruitment

and research is one important way to engage people. It is important to give sufficient consideration

to incentives and rewards, with close liaison with benefit agencies. Good follow-up was needed to

identify former clients. This could be undertaken by the new STR worker role. Mapping care pathways

and using staff from or advertising in the extended team and other partner agencies for recruitment

is key.

3. Making it count

A number of attendees suggested that there was risk of tokenism – doing it because they are asked

to and not getting meaningful results. There was also concern about ‘the usual suspects’.

Service user involvement done well can make life easier for schemes, making them more responsive

and better at engaging the target group. Avoid tokenism by asking the right questions. These need to

be designed in a way that is relevant for staff and which facilitate honesty. It is important to be

honest and clear at the outset to participants about what can and can’t change (avoid over-

promising). True involvement also goes further than purely consultation, bringing together service

users, practitioners and service managers to identify shared solutions. Feedback about what

happened as a result of involvement activities is often over-looked. For commissioners, KPIs need to

be designed to include what the provider has done with the information received, not just what they

did.

‘Usual suspects’ can be reframed as people who are active citizens willing to do work few others wish

to. Make better use of them e.g. could train them to be peer researchers/supporters, so they can help

you engage with more excluded groups. The way to engage other people is by having a range of

involvement opportunities, requiring different levels of time and commitment, thinking about

incentives, and feeding back about change.