What is user involvement?

How users contribute

Users can give the benefits of their experience in all sorts of ways, such as:

• events and conferences

• gatherings

• performance

• poetry

• arts and cultural activities.

Their involvement can be related to all sorts of activities, including:

• training professionals

• planning and managing services

• inspection and service monitoring, including defining quality standards

• research and evaluation

• producing learning materials

• staff recruitment and promotion

• shaping, developing and assessing workers’ practice.

Making it work

When you involve users you need to respect difference, address diversity and seek to be as inclusive as possible. This means, for example, making sure that people can take part if they:

• have physical or sensory impairments

• have learning difficulties

• have experience of mental distress

• do not communicate verbally

• do not speak English.

User involvement is most valuable when it leads to discernable changes and improvements that reflect service users’ rights and needs. This may mean people are directly involved in decision making and have some financial control. Users do, though, need to recognise that different interests have to be negotiated.

Tell us about it

If you are involving users successfully in what you do, we would like to hear about it. Please tell us how your local service involves users.