1) Timing service user involvement activities is crucial to get right - done too early risks reawakening difficult memories or clients being in crisis, too late risks clients wanting to move on or having little recall. A staged approach tailored to individual needs works best. Involvement should be voluntary with appropriate support. 2) Getting people engaged in involvement processes is challenging, with low survey response rates. Greater success was found with phone or in-person surveys. Peer-led recruitment and a variety of engagement methods are important to involve different groups. 3) There is a risk of tokenism if involvement does not result in meaningful change. True involvement brings together users, practitioners and managers to identify shared solutions. Feedback about

1. Building on Firm Foundations Conference, Leeds, 19th
March
Service User Involvement Workshop
Key challenges and responses
1. Timing was a key challenge, but crucial to get right
If activities were undertaken too quickly there was concern that clients would still be in crisis or
were unlikely to have seen the benefit of the service. Undertaken too late, many thought that clients
would want to ‘get on with my life’. It was felt that reawakening difficult memories might cause
relapse, or alternatively the time gap might ‘seem like a lifetime’ to young people who would have
little recall about the service they received. It was also acknowledged that views about criminal
justice services could often change over time.
A staged approach would work best, thinking carefully about which questions it is appropriate and
helpful to ask at which times. Pat emphasised that user involvement activities could be empowering
and support long-term recovery – if they are done well. No one should be forced to get involved and
appropriate (peer / mentor) support for involvement must be made available. A variety of options for
how to get involved is also helpful, since not everyone wants to talk about their experiences at public
meetings. It was suggested that consent forms signed in custody could also include a tick box
establishing permission to be contacted later for involvement activities.
2. Getting people engaged in the process
Many attendees had struggled to get people engaged in the process. Surveys had frequently had low
response rates. Mental health trusts and criminal justice agencies could be resistant to using new
media (e.g. twitter) and there were often regulations on use which could impede creativity.
Challenges included the need to engage different interest groups, e.g. parents, and identifying those
clients who have been missed by the service. The short-term nature of the intervention, transience
of the client group and the multiple care pathways with different ‘end destinations’ for clients also
presented a challenge.
Greater success had been found by undertaking the surveys over the phone or face-to-face. Freepost
responses and text message surveys (where the text was free) were other options, as was the use of
a ‘scratch card’ for feedback in custody suites. To involve different groups, different methods would
be needed (parents and their children likely to respond to different methods). Peer-led recruitment
and research is one important way to engage people. It is important to give sufficient consideration
to incentives and rewards, with close liaison with benefit agencies. Good follow-up was needed to
identify former clients. This could be undertaken by the new STR worker role. Mapping care pathways
and using staff from or advertising in the extended team and other partner agencies for recruitment
is key.

2. 3. Making it count
A number of attendees suggested that there was risk of tokenism – doing it because they are asked
to and not getting meaningful results. There was also concern about ‘the usual suspects’.
Service user involvement done well can make life easier for schemes, making them more responsive
and better at engaging the target group. Avoid tokenism by asking the right questions. These need to
be designed in a way that is relevant for staff and which facilitate honesty. It is important to be
honest and clear at the outset to participants about what can and can’t change (avoid over-
promising). True involvement also goes further than purely consultation, bringing together service
users, practitioners and service managers to identify shared solutions. Feedback about what
happened as a result of involvement activities is often over-looked. For commissioners, KPIs need to
be designed to include what the provider has done with the information received, not just what they
did.
‘Usual suspects’ can be reframed as people who are active citizens willing to do work few others wish
to. Make better use of them e.g. could train them to be peer researchers/supporters, so they can help
you engage with more excluded groups. The way to engage other people is by having a range of
involvement opportunities, requiring different levels of time and commitment, thinking about
incentives, and feeding back about change.