Suchergebnisse

After nineteen years in the Probation Service, Sue Baumbach took a three year career break to set up a Carer's Support Project for the National Schizophrenia Fellowship (NSF). Here, she draws on her experience of working in both the mental health and criminal justice fields, as well as her perspective as a one-time service user, to reflect on the importance of listening to service-users and their carers.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to summarise findings of a review of service user and carer involvement in safeguarding and recommendations for good practice.Design/methodology/approachThe study involved a review of selected literature and a consultation exercise with experts in the field of adult safeguarding and telephone interviews with 13 Adult Safeguarding Leads across England and Wales.FindingsService users value rights, independence, choice and support. Adult Safeguarding policy sets out an expectation of service user involvement in the process and expects agencies to balance rights to self‐determination with properly managed risk. In practice, agencies tend to be risk‐averse and service users often do not feel involved in their safeguarding processes. Processes such as collaborative risk enablement, training and capacity building, working with BME groups and evaluation of involvement help. Good practice examples of involvement in Safeguarding Boards or local forums, developing new methods of user feedback and community involvement were found. Recommendations include more involvement of service users in research, more effective forms of involvement of groups who may be more excluded, shared responsibility for risk, and more training in rights legislation.Practical implicationsThe paper offers recommendations for good practice in improving involvement in adult safeguarding, which is a requirement and an essential component of delivering good services to vulnerable adults.Originality/valueService user involvement in health and social care is now widespread, but there is little knowledge of how to involve the most vulnerable service users who are in need of protection, or how to balance risk and empowerment. This paper addresses the dilemmas facing Adult Protection staff, summarises the experience of practitioners based on the first decade of adult safeguarding work and sets out guidance for improving practice.

ABSTRACTChildren's Centres are the latest in a line of initiatives designed to provide neighbourhood‐based family support. These are part of a spectrum of preventive services from Universalist (primary prevention) to permanence and rehabilitative work (quaternary). High levels of need confronted by tertiary Child Care Social Work and Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, mean that the contribution of these centres at secondary level and responsiveness to its higher‐level needs, have become particularly important. At the same time, the involvement and perspectives of service users have become equally important in the evaluation and development of centres. Users, though, can help create the culture and expectations in centres just through the processes of interaction developed over time. However, although users have evaluated services for their openness, we know little about the part played by service users themselves – particularly through their informal interactions and culture – in the responsiveness of centres to higher‐need families for whom secondary level prevention is appropriate. This paper focuses on the part played by service users as gatekeepers showing they can play an important, and sometimes limiting, part in the responsiveness of centres. The theoretical and practical implications of this for prevention are discussed.

Anita Gibbs, former Probation Officer, now a research student at University of Bristol, examines the benefits and disadvantages for probation service users who become involved as volunteers with projects in formal partnership with the Service, and suggests that whilst users gain voice, choice and control, their probation officers experience a corresponding loss of personal relationship.

Social Care, Service Users and User Involvement provides a definitive introduction to practical, philosophical and theoretical issues at the heart of user involvement. This book provides an accessible account of the latest research findings regarding user involvement on three levels: the delivery and provision of services, practice and practitioners, and research and evaluation. It explores a wide range of service user needs and concerns, including the latest developments in personalisation and the effect of the Equality Act 2010. First-hand accounts illustrate the range of issues and service.

This contribution to Critical Forum comes from Shaping Our Lives, a UK national user-controlled development project and network which has also established a National User Group to develop thinking on service provision and outcomes from a user perspective. Set up in 1996 with initial funding from the Department of Health, it is now supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Its aim is to involve user organizations and service users across user groups, including people with physical and sensory impairments, older people, people with learning difficulties, people living with HIV/AIDS and mental health service users and survivors. Shaping Our Lives has also sought to address other forms of difference, according to race, gender, disability and sexuality. At the same time, while Shaping Our Lives and its National User Group seek to reflect the diversity and viewpoints of service users, neither makes any claim to represent them. Shaping Our Lives currently manages two other national user-led projects. The first of these is Our Voice in Our Future, which supports social care service users in order that they may have a voice in welfare reform locally and nationally. The second initiative supports user involvement in the General Social Care Council and other new social care bodies established by the government to set and regulate standards in care. Shaping Our Lives is actively committed to placing service users at the centre of the government's Quality Strategy for Social Care, to full access to employment by social care service users, to enforceable civil rights to end the barriers posed by inappropriate housing and public transport and to the achievement of flexible support services that are led by users and their needs.

Abstract
Involving service users, in the delivery of health and social care, is a focal point in social policy discourse. Coproduction has become synonymous with anti-oppressive practice and service user empowerment. This article reports on a qualitative study carried out in Northern Ireland which explored service user involvement in adult social care practice and policy development. Semi-structured interviews were completed with service users (n = 6) and social workers (n = 7); thematic analysis was applied to the resultant data. The study was coproduced with service users who informed the research design and were actively involved throughout each phase of the study. Findings suggest that service users are motivated to participate in coproduction and can feel valued in these roles, but meaningful coproduction is a challenge in the current practice environment. Close working relationships, with clear and consistent communication are difficult to maintain amid the current trend of bureaucratisation in our profession. Findings point towards the need for a service-user/social worker alliance which can challenge problematic organisational cultures. Remuneration for service users, engaged in coproduction, is encouraged, alongside organisational recognition of the time and resource necessary for effective coproduction. A procedural and ethical framework for coproduction practices would also be timely.

Experiencing Social Work provides a refreshing change in the expanse of social work education texts. Its focus on learning from people who had received a good service from social workers drew out many of the foundation blocks of practice that can so easily be minimised in favour of 'deeper academic theories'. In short, it reminded me of my own passion for practice and the privilege it is to be part of the social work profession - Kay Wall, Lecturer in Social Work. In this book people tell their stories of positive social work and the difference it has made to their lives. The book was inspired

• Summary: This article considers the nature and basis of risk assessments in mental health services, based on empirical research on the tools used within NHS Mental Health Trusts in England which found a wide variety of such tools in use within them. • Findings: The article examines the problems and potential benefits in the use of such tools, and argues for an inclusive and holistic approach to risk assessments which incorporate our knowledge of the risks of risk assessments. The article pays particular attention to risk assessment procedures as relevant to social workers who have to uphold the requirements of the General Social Care Council Code of Practice, which provides particular emphasis on issues of risk, and service user and carer involvement in assessments. Potential biases and limitations of risk assessment approaches, it is proposed, need to be taken into account in order to have a balanced view of the value of such approaches. • Applications : The article provides a critique of the validity and effectiveness of current risk assessment tools, focusing in upon one key area in mental health work, the assessment and management of potential violence.