Abstract

EQUIP is a joint project between the University of Manchester and Manchester Mental Health and Social Care NHS Trust, along with the University of Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust. It has been awarded nearly £2 million by the National Institute for Health Research to examine ways to improve user and carer involvement in care planning in mental health services. The project will run for five years and has four stages. It aims to benefit service users, carers and mental health professionals.

In partnership with service users and carers we are working to develop a workable and acceptable user/carer-led training package for mental health professionals to improve how much users and carers are involved in care planning. We are hosting focus groups to find out training content, duration and the delivery requirements of the training package.

We are also developing a tool to accurately measure user/carer involvement in care planning. Interviews with users, carers and mental health professionals will determine the priorities and core concepts of quality user/carer engagement and involvement in care planning.

We are evaluating how well the training package works and how cost effective it is. We will do this by delivering the material to some Community Mental Health Teams (CMHTs) and comparing this with current practice in other teams who have not received our training.

In this stage, we want to discover what organisational changes need to be made by mental health teams and the wider NHS systems to improve user involved care planning. We are building up a detailed picture of the existing systems of care planning in Mental Health Trusts.

Additionally, we want to discover the impact of our training on professionals and the service users under their care. Interviews with service users will explore what impact they think the training has had on their experience of care and the everyday management of their mental health problems; what their interactions with staff were like; and how far the care planning helped or hindered them compared to their experience of previous systems of care planning. We’ll interview staff to explore their views, expectations and experiences of training and what it has been like to put the lessons learned into practice. We will observe care planning meetings to see how service user/carers interact with professionals.NIHR PGfAR.

Our training package will be offered to up to 10 NHS Mental Health Trusts and we will advise them on how to improve user involved care planning. We will produce a tool for NHS Trusts to help them assess the extent of user/carer involvement in care planning. We will publish materials for users and carers on what to expect from care planning to help them bring about positive change.