There is no doubt that staff in universities and colleges often feel up against major barriers in terms of time and funding when they try to develop service user and carer involvement and this may account for good practice often developing in pockets, rather than as mainstream practice. But people who use services and carers also face capacity issues and can be faced by additional barriers when they are asked to be involved without being given proper support. We suggest that educators, service users and carers need to pool their resources to challenge practices that exclude and to argue for commitment and funding to make involvement work.
“For carers, time is always a great barrier – trying to juggle two lives at the same time.”
—Carer, South East Scotland
“They use these big words and you don’t know what they mean.”
—Carer, West of Scotland
“I know quite a lot of people – service users – who would want to get involved but their attitude is it doesn’t really matter what we say ‘cos they’re not going to change it anyway ‘cos they’re used to it always being like that… it doesnae really matter what the service user says because it won’t really change anything.”
—Service User, West of Scotland
The research found that lack of allocated funding and insufficient staff time were identified as barriers. Staff group motivation and funding were felt to facilitate involvement.
The service users and carers interviewed said that the barriers to involvement were time, use of jargon by academic staff, and perceived power imbalances between academic staff and service users and carers. Lack of experience was also a barrier.
Top Tip: It takes a ‘can do’ approach to overcome barriers
Beresford and Croft (2001) note some of the factors that can lead to tokenistic involvement including:
In 2008 the Scottish Social Services Council awarded funding of £5000 to HEIs to develop user and carer involvement in student selection. SUCIG worked with Glasgow City Council to hold a consultation day for service users and carers to consider whether they might wish to get involved in training staff and to identify what they needed to be able to do so.
Start with the reasons for developing meaningful involvement and develop a plan that you feel will benefit both contributors and the course requirements.
Beresford, P. and Croft, S., 2001. Service users’ knowledge and the social construction of social work. Journal of Social Work, 1(3).