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What's new - December 2006
Ideas
- Latest ideas - See what agencies have tried and what works
Featured work
GMCVO service user involvement conference
- GMCVO recently held an excellent conference in Manchester entitled "Service user involvement - Could you be doing it better?" Below are some of the presentations and information that came from this event.
- Conference report - looks at some of the key themes from the event
- HARP - community engagement project - a presentation by Elaine Dixon looking at a project to assess the mental health needs of the BME community
- SCIE - good practice service user participation - a presentation by Pete Fleischmann from the Social Care Institute for Excellence.
- The barriers to the meaningful involvement of homeless people - A workshop by Manchesters Service User Network
Resources
Funding & training around user involvement
Funding
- Groundswell grants - for upto £700 for homeless people to set up their own projects
- North West funding - ideas for service user involvement
- North East funding - ideas for service user involvement
- Yorkshire & Humberside funding - ideas for service user involvement
Training
- Hard to reach? - Meaningful inclusion. Effective practice in engagement with service users. One days training in Manchester - 22nd February, 28 February (choose one date)
Miscleaneous
Latest strategies, policies, tools & ideas
- Creating sustainable communities - A response from Greater Manchester service users. A report from GMCVO
- Rewarding participation - Allan Norman from support solutions evaluates the issues associated with rewarding service user involvement.
- Herefordshire Supported Housing for young people - Ticking boxes or genuine user involvement?
- Maximising the role of outreach in client engagement - DWP Research
- Toolkit for change - The Groundswell self help manual. How to start a service user group or run a service user led group within an organisation.
What people want to know about
Below are topics that members of the network have expressed an interest in learning more about. If you any ideas, thoughts or good practice around any of these issues then please email paul.connery@homelesslink.org.uk
- How to get started, how service-users can be involved in decision making, how to make involvement meaningful, how much staff input is also required?
- Clients as volunteers
- To what extent can we support service user’s (e.g should we have representation at trustee level?)
- Board level involvement
- Tenants / clients on interview panels
- Other organisations use of service user reps. How to strike the balance between them being a representative of a group of people at the cost of other people not having a say or being misrepresented.
- It would be useful for the homeless sector to implement a service user group, independent of any service, to discuss experiences and become more involved in the strategic developments of the sector. All agencies could implement their own SUI schemes with a representative accessing the independent panel or steering group. This would obviously need funding!
- Employing Clients
- Peer evaluators
- The use of creative and multimedia techniques to support service users to have a say within the services they receive and in the wider community.
- Contacts for people who are working on service user involvement and are working in new ways to involve service users.
- A list of resources on service user involvement and a list of potential funding for increasing service user involvement.
- Direct Payments