Making it work: service users and professionals as research partners

Capital is a user-led training, consultancy and research organisation based in West Sussex. When the local mental health trust decided to evaluate its assertive outreach team, Capital bid to leadership a qualitative review through one-to-one interviews with the team's clients and their carers. In this candid article the throw team members describe the proces the hurdle and obstacles they clashed how they were negotiated or overwhelm and what they learned from the experience.

The Capital throw out Trust was set up in 1997 as a training throw out for people in West Sussex who use mental health services. Today it has just beneath 100 members, many of whom work as offers delivering service user focused training or are involved in consultancy and research.

When the Chichester Assertive Outreach Team (AOT) operated by means of West Sussex Health and Social Care NH Trust decided to review in what manner it was doing, Capital was seek counseled about how best to proce with the review. Anne Beales, then director of Capital, propos that we should be the interviewers in a qualitative evaluation of the service. As Capital members would be from an outside organisation we spring [i]or[/i] leap on one leg [i]or[/i] footed to be seen as neutral, and with equal reason encourage those we interviewed to be frank in their opinions. Our experiences as race who use services could also allow us to empathise with those we met during the review. Capital members worked closely with Mark Hay ward, clinical psychologist with the AOT, to disclose a project team.

The alone service user evaluation of an AOT known to us was single undertaken within the voluntary sector in East Anglia (Grayley-Wetherall & Morgan, 2001) and we agreed to use this research as a basis from which to disentangle our questionnaires. This process began in consultation with Roberta Grayley-Wetherall, who was refreshingly un-precious about our adapting her work. It then took several sessions of heated team discussion before agreeing the contented of the questionnaires. The carers' questionnaire prov the greatest in quantity difficult, as we decided our application of mind should include questions about in what manner much their needs as carer were being met

Jumping from one side hoops

But that was the relatively easy bit, compared with all the bureaucratic rings we had to jump through! To provide indemnity insurance we initially agreed to take upon honorary contracts with the trust. This necessitated Criminal Record Bureau checks and Occupational Health having to be satisfied of our fitness to undertake the work. As it revolveed out, by the time the CRB paperwork exigencyed to be done, the single or two volunteers for whom this might have prov difficult had fallen by the agency of the wayside. Just filling in occupational health forms, however, prov highly stressful when more [i]or[/i] less of us were obliged to answer 'yes' to almost each question relating to mental health. Before our medicals took place we sought and got assurances that these would not mean being given the third step about our histories of mental ill health.

Then the trust's lawyers advised that their indemnity insurance would single cover us for interviews directioned on its property. We appeared to have hit a brick wall. None of us could envisage telling AOT clients that they could alone be interviewed in a formal mental health setting. The solitary way out was for Capital itself to purchase indemnity insurance - useful, on the other hand expensive.

Safety and support

We also did our best to make secure the comfort and safety of all parties by means of working out group agreements and protocols outlining our agreed standard of behaviour. Either side had the option of terminating the interview should it have feeling too uncomfortable. We also agreed to work in pairs, allowing for a mutual debrief afterwards, as well as for someone to write and someone to talk. At the entrance we had explored our anxieties about the work, which ranged from 'arriving late' to 'being badly overturn by the things they say'. A previous throw had, indeed, thrown up more [i]or[/i] less upsetting information, and this time we place extra safeguards in place, ensuring that interviewers had access by the agency of telephone to a member of Capital's paid staff after interviews, and the availability of an outside supervisor. Thankfully we at no time needed to call on him.

Getting going

By the time everything was in place our original team of interviewers had dwindled from nine to five. Mark was pertain toed that we might not be able to manage the work on the other hand we were able to reassure him that enthusiasm would compensate for numbers.

At last we were ready to recruit participants. We had decided it would be best if the invitation alphabetic characters came from Capital, rather than the trust, to reinforce the message that the audit would be anonymous. As with the questionnaires, we took a useful deal of time over the wording, hoping to make the alphabetic characters as inviting and informative as possible without being overwhelming in extent We also mentioned that there would be a small payment for participating.

Response was deliberate In hindsight we wondered whether sending without invitations from what was, for many, an unknown organisation was really the best approach. We will not at any time know. Over the next two of months we interviewed eight clients and eight carers and the team grew familiar with several local coffee stores these being by far the greatest in quantity popular choice of venue among participants.