Leeds Involving People

Description

Leeds Involving People (LIP) began under it’s former name – Leeds Involvement Project in 1994, and was established to support service user and carer involvement in planning community care services.

LIP was set up to promote the representation of service users and carers in the planning, delivery and monitoring of services; to advise statutory and other agencies on the development of policy and good practice on user and carer involvement, in order to improve the conditions of life for the residents of Leeds.

LIP’s priority is around building a strong membership base representing a diverse range of adult users and carers, across all ages, disabilities, gender, race, ethnicity, faith and sexuality so it is in a good position to represent and advise on good practice as “experts by experience”.

Public involvement in research

Leeds Involving People (LIP) can support members of the public to become ‘involvement ready’ to ensure that their voices are at the centre of decision making processes that affect the services they use.

‘Involvement ready’ is a term LIP uses to describe people who are empowered to attend meetings and events and have the confidence to speak in front of others about their views and experience in a professional manner so that they can help shape the services they use.

LIP has a large membership base of people that use health and social care services and who have a broad range of views and experiences surrounding these. We bring our members together through a wide variety of involvement activities where they are able to share their knowledge and expertise and ensure their collective voice can support the improvement and co-design of services.

By becoming a member of LIP we can offer you involvement training as well as a number of ways to get involved, such as:

• Involvement Opportunities
  We work closely with our members to understand what services they have an opinion on and what type of involvement activities they have an interest in. That way, when involvement opportunities arise, we can match our members to the opportunities that suit them. We also work closely with other public bodies, voluntary organisations and service user groups that offer involvement opportunities so that we can signpost our members onto the ones that will be of interest to them.

• Consultations and Surveys
  We work with public bodies to gain public opinion around their services when they are conducting consultations and surveys. Our members not only share their views and opinions on the subject, but work with public bodies to design the surveys, consultations and questionnaires in partnership. This way we can ensure they are easy to understand, are accessible to service users and are distributed to all sections of the community.

• Involvement Training
  Our user-led ‘involvement ready’ training packages can help organisations and individuals develop their skills around effective involvement. Available to Service Users and their Carers, as well as service providers who work with service users, our training can be tailored to meet your specific needs.

Our involvement training for individuals aims to help people understand more about:

• What involvement is and how to get involved
• How decisions are made that affect the services that people use
• Becoming actively involved in the decisions that shape services
• Sharing views and experience in a professional manner
• Using experiences to help make involvement activities accessible to others