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User Involvement

User Involvement has exploded in the past 3 years giving way to many users becoming involved in their own treatment and the treatment of other users in the treatment system in their local areas. This involvement has come in many forms to date, they include:

• Local individual users becoming educated about treatment services, their rights whilst in treatment, care planning, educated on evidence based prescribing, allowing users to steer their own treatment in the way they wish it to go
• Local “User Groups” setting up, such as OUT, educating users on the above subjects, sitting at all levels of the treatment system, advising DAAT’s, drug services and the NTA on what current trends are out there in regards to drug use and what service users like and dislike about the local treatment system, feeding into the planning and implementation of drug services, ensuring they are ‘user friendly’, accessible and provide good treatment, free of punitive measures to ensure compliance and ensuring the treatment given out is humane and evidenced based
• When each service funded by DAAT is performance managed every 3 months, users from that service have been attending the meetings that take place and feeding in the views of users who access the service, this ensures that the services are adhering to the requirements asked of them within Models of Care to consult with users of their service and the requirement within their contract with DAAT to do the same
• Users becoming involved in the drug treatment system by passing on their expert knowledge of drugs and addiction to other agencies through training sessions and practical demonstrations using synthetic drugs to give basic drug awareness to services who are considered as ‘tier 1 services’, these are services that come into contact with drug users, but do not solely work with drug users, for example, social services, A and E departments, housing services, door men etc
• Users have set up peer support groups where they can meet and support each other, this is not really user involvement, but, these forums can be used to consult with drug users on what they like and dislike about services, this information can then be fed into DAAT through a designated DAAT employee who is given the user involvement brief as part of their role

When OUT 1 st came onto the user Involvement scene, there were only 2 user groups in the SE Region. We spent the next 2 years going around the SE Region, helping others like ourselves to set their groups up and encouraging DAAT’s to invest some cash into these groups to get them off the ground and to ensure they became and integral part of the treatment system locally.

Within this time, we have seen the cash put aside by DAAT’s to ensure user involvement is credible and influences changes within the treatment system rise dramatically, when we 1 st came onto the scene, each DAAT, except Oxfordshire DAAT, had barely £1-2,000 put aside to carry out user involvement throughout the coming year, if you look at those grids from this year, 05-06 and the coming year, 06-07, you will see the amounts in some areas reaching over £60,000 to cover paid posts of user reps, full funding of all activities for the coming year and lots of money for resources. OUT sees itself as the main contributor to this change and made it our mission to ensure user groups were fully funded and that users are paid for their time and expert experience.

When OUT 1 st came along, there was a meeting called ‘Experts by Experience’ that was run by the NTA every 3 months, giving training to user reps on all aspects of user involvement and practical training such as attending meetings etc. This was stopped nearly 2 years ago and was not resurrected as another group or forum, so, there is a lack of training available to users to show them how to get involved in all of the above. OUT stepped in around the SE region and took this role on. We were commissioned by the NTA to write a manual entitled ‘a guide to peer education and user involvement’. This manual left our office regularly with many DAAT’s ordering a copy. Things have changed within the treatment system since then (you can access the old manual content via our home page) and you will find that any users becoming involved in U/I need full and thorough training to enable them to be fully involved and to fully understand the concept of U/I and how to put it into practice locally.

If you are in a group and are wondering how and where do you go to get help to make your group into a professionally run, integral part of the treatment system, please contact OUT to arrange some training or to gain access to resources to help you to set your group up such as ‘terms of reference’, mission statement’s etc.

Website produced by Steve Thomas

Enquiries to - stevie.thomas1974@yahoo.co.uk