Mental health service users with expertise in involvement sought.

[Jill Anderson]

The Mental Health Foundation are looking for approximately 20 people to take part in a consultation exercise to help develop indicators of effective involvement for mental health service users. People will be required to complete two or three online questionnaires at approximately monthly intervals. A small payment will be offered to those who complete the questionnaires.

Background The National Involvement Partnership (NIP) project ‘Involvement for Influence - Influencing for Improvement’ aims to develop national standards for the involvement of service users and carers and establish an infrastructure for involvement. The idea is to ‘hard wire’ the service user and carer direct voice and experience into health and care services. The project will develop the previously evaluated NIP work, share good practice, centralise resources, strengthen existing networks and build an infrastructure that connects and coordinates involvement. As part of this work I am consulting service user experts to seek consensus on a range of indicators to help identify how good service user involvement is in an area, service or organisation. This consultation will form part of my doctorate and inform the overall NIP project.

About the process The Delphi method has been chosen for this particular study because it has proven to be useful as a tool for helping groups of experts reach consensus on complicated issues. Delphi is an iterative process that consists of a number of rounds in which a long list of categories or options is sifted down to a much smaller group via consensus. Typically are typically there are 2 to 3 rounds, although the number of rounds is not restricted. I have looked at the literature with a particular emphasis on using Delphi in mental health with a range of experts and the literature includes experts who may be professionals or service users or carers or other stakeholders. The advantages of Delphi approach are as follows:

It allows you to consult with people when they are not physically present in the room or not together at a single point in time. This allows people to contribute, who would not be able to contribute if they were expected to be in the same place at the same time it also enables people to contribute from a much broader geographical location. This research will use a web-based Delphi. No physical meetings will occur; the only requirement for Delphi panellists is that they have Internet access.

What experience skills & knowledge would a panel member bring to this work? We are looking for people whose experience, knowledge and skills would include: 1.  Personal experience of using mental health services 2.  A track record of involvement and influence, improvement and impact 3. Innovative ideas about involvement, influencing, improvement and impact 4. An in-depth understanding of the current involvement experiences and challenges faced by the diverse range of people with mental health problems and the family and friends who provide care and support to them 5.  An ability to draw on your own experience and that of others who use services and/or their family and friends to inform involvement policy and service development 6.  Experience of working on a formal committee at local or national level, e.g. LINKS, NHS Trust Board, Service user/carer group, School Governors, Private sector business, charity, community, cultural or faith groups 7.    Experience of working with organisations at a local or national level and an understanding of how involvement could be developed strategically

8. An interest in extending the philosophy of process, presence, purpose and impact (PPPI) in service user involvement.

If you are interested, please send a brief expression of interest in a form of your choosing to [e-mail] href="redir.aspx?C=nWaxSubOB0CTNfwpF7s4Kwc94POZI9AIht2tkugL9OHvGsf-3q3r4ec7K1wuX4Ufj5kgib6esBw.&URL=mailto%3adcrepaz-keay%40mentalhealth.org.uk" target="_blank">mailto:[e-mail]> . I’ll ask you to complete a diversity monitoring form (which will help us to appoint a diverse group of people) A small fee will be payable on completion of the first two rounds of the study.