The road to collaboration

2006 Conference

Judy Beckett and Louise Bryant both work at the University of Leeds. Judy has used mental health services in the past. Louise works as a researcher and has involved service users in her research.

Judy and Louise ran a research project which looked at whether it would help people to have an advocate with them when they went to hospital after they had hurt themselves on purpose (self-harm). The project involved service users as researchers. As part of this project we wanted to see how well this involvement had worked. Judy and Louise will talk about the different ways they used to think about where the involvement in their research had gone well and where it could have worked better.

In the workshop the people who attend will be able to make a colourful display to show the different ideas that different people have about what makes good involvement. This will help people see, think and talk about the ways in which involvement can be seen to have worked or not. It will give ideas to those attending about how they could see if involvement has worked in their own projects.