Beyond the Usual Suspects: Developing diversity in involvement is a three year Department of Health-funded project which started in July 2005. Its aim is to find out how we can get more people involved in service user issues. We are particularly interested in looking at why certain groups of service users, such as younger people, people who communicate differently, people from black and ethnic minority communities and people using residential services, experience additional barriers to involvement.
In the first half of the project four regional development projects worked at increasing involvements in their own groups. Each project looked at ways to improve the opportunities for as wide a range of service users as possible to become involved in health and social care policy and practice. They all held a series of meetings and also an event aimed at attracting new people.
The project has now moved into its final phase with work beginning on a resource pack for service users and service providers to be launched next summer. It will be based on the work of the project and what we have found out about diversity issues through our development work. A key part of the pack will be Shaping Our Lives’ new DVD on user involvement which was filmed at the ‘Get Together’ event held for everyone involved in the project in March. It was produced for Shaping Our Lives by the award-winning Arcadian Productions, a film-making company run by disabled people.
