Prof Peter Beresford Citizen Involvement and Empowerment: Building on our Broader Experience

Professor Peter Beresford built on some of the themes raised by Mandy Wearne by offering an insight into the origins of public involvement and the challenges individuals have to overcome in participation. Professor Beresford suggested options and insights into how organisations committed to involvement could make it easier to for service users to participate in the involvement process.

One particularly interesting result of research suggested a high degree of value in introducing involvement into occupational development programmes. This aspect moved the discussion forward in many respects because the value of staff experience in dealing with issues usually mirrors that of the patients, and of course less experienced staff necessarily are at a different stage in the journey, which greater patient involvement can accelerate and therefore be used to 'raise the bar' in terms of minimum standards as well as affect 'normal' standards. Perhaps only then can we raise the game in terms of new levels of service quality.

In order for involvement to be effective Prof Beresford highlighted a need to avoid fragmentation of the service users organisation- as happened in the past all through the development of the involvement process.

Ultimately the main building blocks of equality are related to 'accessibility' , whether physical, communication or cultural. These accessibility issues will need to be addressed formally through Local Area Agreements and LSP's and without these no consolidation of involvement will have been cemented in place.